Brookings’ Hutchins Center forms task force on reducing impact of extreme weather on insurance costs and availability   

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Hutchins Center on Fiscal & Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution announced the launch of the Task Force on Reducing Impact of Extreme Weather on Insurance Costs & Availability, which will make policy recommendations to federal, state, and local governments, as well as the private sector.  

The 11-member task force is chaired by Steve Barlett, a former mayor of Dallas and congressman and former chief executive of the Financial Services Roundtable, and Robert Litan, a practicing lawyer and economist who is a non-resident senior fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. 

“The increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events — hurricanes, windstorms, wildfires, and floods — is driving up the cost and shrinking the availability of homeowners’ insurance,” Bartlett and Litan said.  “This is a growing issue across the U.S. and demands a multi-faceted policy response, implemented with urgency.” 

The task force will evaluate a wide variety of potential policy responses — including the role of building codes, incentives for homeowners to strengthen the resilience of their homes, harnessing capital markets, and improving regulation.

It will draw from academic research commissioned by the Hutchins Center.  The task force plans to issue its report and recommendations in the first half of 2027.  David Wessel, senior fellow and director of the Hutchins Center, will coordinate the work. 

The work is supported, in part, by Arnold Ventures. Brookings Is committed to quality, independence, and impact. In line with its values and policies, Brookings’ publications represent the sole views of its authors or task force members.  

Members of the task force are:  

Steve Bartlett, Co-Chair:  Bartlett was CEO of The Financial Services Roundtable from June 1999 to October 2012.  Previously, he was the mayor of Dallas, Texas (1991-95), a member of the U.S. Congress (1983-91), and on the Dallas City Council (1977-81). While in Congress,  Bartlett served on the House Banking Committee (now the House Financial Services Committee).    

Robert (Bob) Litan, Co-Chair:  Litan is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he was previously vice president and director of Economic Studies. He is also a practicing attorney specializing in complex antitrust and business litigation as a shareholder of Berger Montague, based in Philadelphia. He served during the first term of the Clinton administration as principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department.  

Sean Becketti:  Becketti is an economist and financial industry veteran with three decades of experience in academics, government, and private industry and most recently joined the Coastal Risk Advisory Board. Over the past two decades, Becketti led proprietary research teams at several leading financial firms, responsible for the models underlying the valuation, hedging and relative value analysis of some of the largest fixed-income portfolios in the world. During his tenure as chief economist at Freddie Mac, Becketti authored one of the first articles published by a government-sponsored enterprise exploring the impacts of climate change on housing.   

Richard (Dick) Berner:  Berner is Clinical Professor of Management Practice in the Department of Finance and is Co-Director of the Stern Volatility and Risk Institute. Professor Berner served as the first director of the Office of Financial Research (OFR) from 2013 until 2017. He was counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury from April 2011 to 2013.  Before that, he was co-head of global economics and chief US economist at Morgan Stanley.  

 Patricia (Patty) Born:  Born is the Midyette Eminent Scholar in Risk Management and Insurance in the Department of Risk Management/Insurance, Real Estate and Legal Studies at Florida State University’s College of Business. She also serves as doctoral coordinator of the Ph.D. program with a major in risk management. Her research interests include insurance market structure and performance, professional liability, health insurance, and the management of catastrophic risks. Born is a member of the board of the American Risk and Insurance Association and serves on the editorial board of the Risk Management and Insurance Review and Journal of Insurance Issues.   

Karen Clark: Clark is the CEO and co-founder of modeling firm KC & Co. A leading global authority on catastrophe risk assessment and management,  Clark founded the first catastrophe modeling company in 1987 (AIR, acquired by ISO/Verisk in 2002) and is widely credited with creating the catastrophe modeling industry. The probabilistic catastrophe modeling techniques and innovative technologies she pioneered decades ago revolutionized the way insurers, reinsurers, and other financial institutions assess and manage extreme event risk.  

Douglas Heller: Heller is Consumer Federation of America’s director of Insurance. He has two decades of work on public policy and regulatory matters related to property-casualty insurance and, for nine years, served as the executive director of the national consumer advocacy organization, Consumer Watchdog.  Heller is a  board member of the California Automobile Assigned Risk Plan (CAARP), which oversees that state’s innovative Low-Cost Auto Insurance Program for low-income drivers, and he serves on the Executive Board of the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud.  

Dave Jones: Jones is the Director of the Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE). Jones served two terms as California’s Insurance Commissioner from 2011 to 2018.  

David Long:  Long is the former chairman and CEO of Liberty Mutual Insurance and now sits on the board of MassMutual. Long began his career at Liberty Mutual Insurance in 1985, being appointed president in 2010, CEO in 2011, and chairman in 2013. Under his leadership as CEO, Liberty Mutual became the sixth-largest global property and casualty (P&C) insurer.  

Kevin Stiroh:  Stiroh is a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, where he leads research efforts on climate-related financial and macroeconomic risks and policy implications.  Most recently, Stiroh was a senior advisor in the Division of Supervision and Regulation at the Board of Governors where he designed and led the Fed’s microprudential approach to the financial risks of climate change. He also served as cochair of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Risks. Prior to that role, Stiroh served as executive vice president and head of the Supervision Group at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and was a member of the Federal Reserve’s Supervision Committee and Large Institution Supervision Coordinating Committee (LISCC), co-lead of the Basel Committee’s Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Risks, and chair of the Senior Supervisors Group.   

Nancy Wallace:  Wallace is a professor of Finance and Real Estate and holds the Lisle and Roslyn Payne Chair in Real Estate and Capital Markets at the Haas School of Business, the University of California, Berkeley. She is chair of the Real Estate Group, co-chair of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, and directs the Real Estate and Financial Markets Laboratory.