Biodiversity site screening for insurance underwriting and the ORSA
Insurance underwriting meets biodiversity at the level of the insured site: the plant next to a wetland, the plantation on a customary claim, the solar park at the edge of a nature reserve, the construction risk inside a buffer zone. EIOPA's June 2025 report on biodiversity risk management by insurers, prepared under the mandate of the Solvency II review, found a significant investment exposure to nature-dependent assets and concluded that the sector's underwriting exposure could not yet be sized because the site-level data was missing. ERWAY Legality Assessment produces that data per insured or financed polygon.
Every site is checked against protected areas, Indigenous and community lands, World Heritage and biosphere sites, protected wetlands and threatened-species records, and receives one outcome with the strictest restriction tier behind it. For an underwriter that is a fact about the risk — a prohibited or restricted finding is a permit question, a liability question and a reputational one — and for the own risk and solvency assessment it is the beginning of an exposure figure. The banks and lenders page describes the same screening on the credit side; the factory site and wind and solar pages cover the risks most often written.
What EIOPA found
That insurers have taken early steps on biodiversity risk, that investment exposure to assets dependent on nature and ecosystem services is significant, and that a lack of data prevents a comprehensive view of underwriting exposure. The report asks insurers to consider both the impact of biodiversity loss on the business and the business's impact on biodiversity. Both start from knowing where the insured sites are and what designations they touch.
What the screening gives an underwriter
Per site: protected-area overlap with category, class and hectares; heritage and wetland relation with the footprint's confidence stated; tenure status where the site lies on Indigenous or community land, with the consent flag; species context alongside the outcome. The output is the same for a single construction risk and for a book of ten thousand agricultural sites, and the export carries every finding with its date into the underwriting file or the portfolio analysis.
What remains the insurer's
Pricing, wording, the exposure model and the ORSA judgement. The screening is a preliminary check against international protection records; it does not assess physical hazard, dependency or transition risk, and it is labelled as such. Where a national register is the authority — for a permit condition, for a legal reserve — the page tells you to consult it. What it settles is which insured sites carry a designation that the proposal form never asked about.