CASE STUDY 18 Zurich Insurance – Resilience Solutions Zurich Resilience Solutions (ZRS) is Zurich Insurance’s dedicated business unit focused on climate resilience and risk management. It combines advanced analytics, using proprietary climate models, with on-site assessments to help clients identify, quantify and adapt to climate vulnerabilities across assets and operations. ZRS evaluates water-related vulnerabilities, such as flood and drought exposure, using scenario models with quantifiable triggers like rainfall thresholds and reservoir levels, linked to mitigation strategies and financing.46 A practical example is Zurich Syariah Parametric Weather Index Insurance in Indonesia, where smallholding coffee farmers face extreme weather but lack access to traditional insurance. Zurich Syariah introduced a weather index-based insurance, which activates using satellite data and rainfall triggers, bypassing on-site damage assessment to enable fast payouts – enhancing agricultural resilience.47 Water finance, via blue bonds, sustainability- linked loans and blended models, remains underdeveloped. Blue bonds represented less than 1% of global sustainable bond issuance in 2024, despite being well suited to water, given that average nine-year maturities align with infrastructure payback periods.48 Water-specific instruments can stimulate demand from financiers by linking capital- raising to clear efficiency and resilience targets. Still, enhancing the operational efficiency of water utilities remains even more crucial to strengthening their bankability and creditworthiness, creating the conditions for finance to flow at scale. To unlock the market, policy-makers should support the development of a water taxonomy, mandate harmonized impact reporting and integrate water metrics into corporate sustainability disclosures – all of which increase clarity and stimulate demand. At the same time, governments, DFIs and multilateral development banks (MDBs) can catalyse financing by promoting collaboration, acting as anchor investors or guarantors, and deploying blended finance tools to de-risk private participation. Water finance instrumentsWater-related risks remain largely under-recognized and under-insured, despite growing impacts of floods and droughts. In Europe, for instance, only about 25% of €900 billion of losses caused by natural disasters in the past 40 years were insured.45 Insurance instruments, such as parametric insurance and sovereign catastrophe pools, disburse funds based on predefined triggers like rainfall deficits or reservoir levels and should be promoted globally. The insurance industry can play a crucial role to quantify water-related risks by collaborating with ecosystem players. Insurers may be incentivized to design water-specific products, with dedicated risk parameters, payout structures and blended finance mechanisms. Insurance and risk transfer Bridging the €6.5 Trillion Water Infrastructure Gap: A Playbook 32

Bridging the %E2%82%AC6.5 Trillion Water Infrastructure Gap A Playbook 2025