Head of Insurance, UNEP FI
Butch Bacani is the Head of Insurance at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). He leads the UN Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative (PSI), the largest collaboration between the UN and the insurance industry. Endorsed by the UN Secretary-General and insurance industry CEOs, the PSI is a global framework and initiative for the industry to address sustainability issues—as risk managers, insurers and investors—and to build resilient, inclusive and sustainable communities and economies on a healthy planet. Butch also chairs the UN Forum for Insurance Transition to Net Zero (FIT), a UN-led and convened multistakeholder forum to accelerate and scale up a just transition to a resilient net-zero emissions economy.
Butch conceptualized sustainable insurance, net-zero insurance, nature-positive insurance, and insurance SDGs. He leads initiatives that contribute to achieving the Paris Climate Agreement, Global Biodiversity Framework, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These include creating the PSI and the FIT, producing the first global environmental, social and governance guides for non-life and life & health insurance business, piloting the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) with the world's leading insurers, conceptualizing a Sustainable Insurance Facility with V20 finance ministers for the most climate-vulnerable countries, creating the PSI's nature-positive insurance initiative, and aligning insurance portfolios with the SDGs. Butch co-led the creation of the UN Sustainable Insurance Forum for regulators and supervisors, worked with the California Insurance Commissioner to produce the world's first sustainable insurance roadmap, and was a member of the Green Finance Task Force initiated by the People's Bank of China and UNEP to establish China's green financial system.
Butch led the global process that created the PSI in 2012 and led UNEP's insurance and investment global work programmes from 2006 to 2010, working with the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). He has shaped global initiatives to address climate change and disaster risks, nature and biodiversity loss, plastic pollution, environmental pollution liability, illegal fishing, and tobacco risks; and to protect UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Prior to the UN, he was in the insurance industry for over a decade, working with leading insurers and reinsurers worldwide.
