Redefining Resilience

March 30, 2026 11 mins

Redefining Resilience

At Aon, resilience is more than just adapting to change—it is leading our industry in the face of uncertainty. In 2025, we expanded our efforts to improve access to insurance and capital for countries, communities and individuals alike.

Aon: Redefining Resilience for Vulnerable Communities around the World

Aon has long helped communities, organizations and countries protect themselves against new and emerging risks. Today , accelerating climate, geopolitical and economic volatility is increasing complexity across global systems — exposing a protection gap that leaves more than half the world uninsured, with the greatest impact felt by vulnerable communities and global growth.

At Aon we believe that no risk is uninsurable and are committed to making sure that resilience is accessible. By harnessing advanced data and analytics and financial engineering, Aon has changed a reactive approach into a proactive engine and, in the process, set new standards for speed, transparency and equity.

New Forms of Capital for Vulnerable Populations

By serving as a bridge between humanitarian organizations, capital providers and insurers, Aon has sparked cross-sector collaboration and systemic change. Our innovative use of not only traditional products, but also parametric insurance and catastrophe bonds — once exclusive to private markets — now gives vulnerable populations the opportunity to better assess their risks and access new forms of capital.

Our solutions help governments and organizations maintain core services and advance humanitarian missions, in the face of climate, geopolitical and economic volatility. By blending public and private capital, Aon has created new market opportunities that go beyond traditional philanthropy.

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Impact Report 2025

Executive Summary

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01 Colombia Coffee

Protecting the Global Coffee Supply Chain from Climate Risk

The global coffee industry is quickly becoming a prime example of how climate risk translates into business risk. The world’s main coffee-producing countries — Brazil, Colombia and Vietnam — are facing more frequent and severe droughts, directly threatening yields, quality and the reliability of supply.

Aon’s climate analytics show that in the next 25 years , half the world’s coffee supply could be threatened by drought — roughly double the current share.

Despite these large and growing losses, the vast majority of coffee crops lost to drought are uninsured, leaving producers and buyers exposed and destabilising long-term supply relationships.

In Colombia, there is an added complication in that smallholder farmers — who make up the majority of the country’s coffee supply — are on average 58 years old. Severe climate events can push these producers out of the supply chain entirely, with no younger generation to take over.

In 2025, Aon spotted an opportunity to close this protection gap between the insured and uninsured and improve the resilience for farmers facing climate risk. Working with a global coffee chain, the Colombian government and a local coffee trader, Aon constructed an insurance program for farmers in the Narino region.

This parametric insurance program addresses two main climate risks for the farmers: excessive rainfall during the harvest and drought during the flowering — both of which are increasing in frequency and severity due to climate change.

The program encourages the farmers to remain in business during adverse weather events, thereby maintaining supply chain stability for the global coffee chain and improving community resilience for the farmers.

“As climate change continues to challenge the food and drink industry, the need for innovative risk management strategies is clear,” said Dominic Probyn, Aon’s director for climate risk advisory and architect of the Colombia parametric insurance. “Insurers can help close the protection gap in food supply chains — demand and risk capital are there to address the challenge.”
02 Jamaica Parametric

Helping Jamaica to Recover from Hurricane Melissa

When natural catastrophes strike, communities, businesses and governments can often face months of waiting for financial support to rebuild — if it comes at all.

Jamaica is the world’s third-most exposed country to natural disasters positioned in the Atlantic Hurricane Belt with over 80% of its population living in low-lying coastal zones in a region where up to three-quarters of disaster losses go uninsured.. In the past, hurricanes imposed severe strain on the country, wiping out entire sections of the economy and eating up limited public budgets.

Working with the Jamaican government and The World Bank, Aon built a $150 million catastrophe bond — the first ever sponsored by a Caribbean government and small island — to help the island recover quickly should disaster strike. Using clear, pre-agreed triggers like storm strength and location, funds were designed to flow within weeks, not months.

In October 2025, Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Jamaica causing $8.8 billion in damage, the equivalent of 41% of Jamaica’s GDP, making it the costliest storm in the island’s history. When the storm struck, the bond provided a near immediate payout of $150 million, enabling Jamaica to fund emergency response, restore infrastructure and protect social programs.

As well as providing much needed funds, Jamaica used the catastrophe bond to signal its fiscal responsibility and strengthen its credibility with global partners. In fact, since the hurricane, Jamaica has secured $6.7 billion for three years in further international funding, proving that innovative risk management attracts investment.

Jamaica’s catastrophe bond is a breakthrough in sovereign disaster risk financing. While catastrophe bonds already exist, the majority have been used by large nations and global insurers. Aon broke through that barrier by structuring a transaction that enables a small island state to tap global capital markets.

The Jamaican bond’s reserves have also driven long-term impact through The World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, where funds awaiting deployment are used to finance education, infrastructure and social development projects. This dual-purpose approach transforms disaster financing into a proactive tool for equity and climate adaptation.
03 New Zealand Resilience

Turning Risk Exposure into Resilience Advantage

Around the world, linear infrastructure systems like roads, water and sanitary networks are typically underinsured and, in certain countries, entirely uninsured.

So, when a natural catastrophe strikes, not only is there a substantial protection gap between insured and economic losses, but it is also usually the government which bears the financial and logistical responsibility to bring everything back online.

Aon is working with local governments around the world to ensure that key infrastructure is insurable and resilient. And Aon has been using data and analytics to identify future hazards and accurately price the risks.

This project has its roots in the devastating 6.3-magnitude earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2011, which killed 185 people, disrupted tens of thousands of lives and destroyed 80% of the city centre.

As part of the years-long reconstruction process following the quake, local government across New Zealand soon realised that to properly protect the city and its linear infrastructure, a new integrated approach to risk engineering and insurance would be needed — one that would understand true value of these assets, their vulnerability, opportunities for resilience retrofits and back it up with optimised risk transfer.

Using engineering expertise and catastrophe modelling, Aon improved the understanding of the risk, identified vulnerability hotspots in operations of these linear infrastructure systems — along with the steps needed to reduce the risk to make local council systems either insurable or make risk transfer more economic.

Armed with this information, and working with the London insurance markets, Aon and the New Zealand local government successfully created an insurance program for previously uninsured linear infrastructure assets. Since 2012, Aon and New Zealand have worked to keep the program at a constant, manageable level by highlighting risk improvements and resilience retrofits and providing better data to the insurance markets.

Partnering with environmental and engineering firm Tonkin + Taylor, the technology and modelling Aon first used in New Zealand now helps local councils around the world understand their vulnerabilities to future disasters and find the most effective mitigation and adaptation actions to increase their resilience.
04 Start Networks

How Aon and the Start Network are Protecting Communities at the Frontlines of Climate Risk

When floods, droughts or cyclones hit, the difference between resilience and devastation often comes down to timing. For millions of people living on the frontlines of climate risk, access to early funding can mean crops protected instead of lost, families kept together instead of displaced, and communities secured before a crisis escalates.

Together with the Start Network, Aon is helping ensure that life‑saving support reaches communities before disasters unfold—not after the damage is done.

Since 2023, Aon has partnered with the Start Network to strengthen Start Ready, a global anticipatory action fund that enables local organizations to act ahead of predictable climate shocks. By working with Aon’s capital tool Remetrica and applying Aon’s risk expertise to build insurance capacity, the collaboration adds a critical view of the organizations risk and builds layer of financial protection to the fund—ensuring it can withstand years of heightened climate volatility and continue delivering early support at scale.

This work reflects Aon’s commitment to redefining resilience: using risk insight and innovative capital solutions to expand protection for the communities that need it most.

“We are proud to work with the Start Network,” said Emma Karhan, head of public private partnerships at Aon. “This initiative underscores our dedication to fostering resilience and providing innovative solutions for humanitarian efforts.”

“Thanks to this insurance layer, Start Ready funds can be stretched even further — enabling more people to be protected and more resources to be disbursed ahead of specific climate events,” said Anna Farina, head of crisis anticipation and risk finance at the Start Network. “This is a significant step forward in scaling anticipatory action and building greater resilience where it's needed most.”
05 IFRC Aid Case Study Update

Accelerating IFRC Aid to Communities in Need

When disasters strike without warning, the speed at which help arrives can determine whether families find shelter, access clean water, or receive lifesaving medical care.

For communities facing smaller‑scale or under‑reported crises, delays in funding can mean being overlooked entirely. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) exists to close that gap — delivering immediate support to communities in crisis, wherever and whenever emergencies occur.

Previously, IFRC’s Disaster Response Emergency Fund (DREF) could run dry before year’s end, prompting them to work with Aon and reinsurers to secure a groundbreaking indemnity insurance policy — the first of it’s kind for the humanitarian sector. The policy protects DREF from volatility and increases its capacity to effectively distribute funds to those in need.

In 2024, demands for disaster relief surpassed the DREF’s threshold, but this time the shortfall triggered the policy’s first-ever insurance payout. Aon secured 15.5 million Swiss francs (approximately $17 million) in insurance payouts, enabling the swift delivery of critical humanitarian aid to an additional one million people across countries grappling with disaster.

As part of the program, Aon managed the claims process through a tightly coordinated operational framework, ensuring funds reached the Red Cross within seven business days — even across sanctioned countries where humanitarian exemptions are in place. It was one of the strongest representations that the industry could collaborate effectively and efficiently to deliver for those that need it most.

This funding has supported urgent relief efforts across Mali, Sierra Leone, Nepal, Vietnam, Nigeria, Niger, South Sudan, Bolivia, Lao PDR and Bosnia and Herzegovina, ensuring timely assistance reached communities when they needed it most.

This product has been renewed for another three years, establishing its purpose within the organisation as a key lever for managing risks within the DREF.
06 Ukraine Update

Supporting Economic Recovery in Ukraine

Since the 2022 Russian invasion in Ukraine, western insurers have largely stepped back from insuring business in the country, making it harder for businesses to operate in Ukraine.

As the largest global broker operating in Ukraine, Aon is committed to supporting the country’s economic recovery. Guided by our team on the ground and contacts around the world, Aon is putting our expertise, analytics and relationships towards urgent work that will unlock innovative solutions to this complex challenge.

In June 2024, Aon launched a $350 million insurance program with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) to build insurance capacity and accelerate new capital investment to fuel economic recovery in Ukraine.

The program consisted of a comprehensive $50 million reinsurance facility — developed by Aon, the DFC and the Ukraine Ministry for Development of Economy and Trade — and an additional $300 million in war risk insurance designed for Ukraine's healthcare and agriculture industries.

Beyond the initial program, in December 2024, Aon launched a €110 million ($115 million) insurance facility in collaboration with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development to provide reinsurance capacity for international reinsurers and Ukrainian insurance companies to cover war-related risks in Ukraine.

In 2025 Aon launched the EMEA Ukraine Early Careers Program with the aim of hiring displaced Ukrainians in Aon offices across Europe. As part of the program, 10 Ukrainian colleagues joined Aon in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovakia on an 18-month development journey focused on building their business skills and growing their professional networks.

The program prepares the future workforce for when these young professionals may return to Ukraine — with skills, experience and a strong path forward.