How do we make sure the people most exposed to climate risk are protected by a financial system? That question drives the work of Kate Schweigart, senior vice president for innovative finance at Rare, a U.S. nonprofit focused on community-led conservation, who recently spoke with Linda-Eling Lee, the MSCI Institute’s founding director.

Schweigert, whose work sits at the intersection of insurance and climate change, focuses on the communities that conventional markets overlook. For her, the aim goes far beyond payouts after extreme weather events like storms and floods: “It’s not just insurance,” she says, “it’s a form of social protection.”

That principle is already at work in the Philippines, where Schweigart helped design a parametric policy for small-scale fishers whose income depends on getting out to sea. The product pays them to stay ashore when conditions turn too dangerous, easing financial stress on households and breaking the cycle of overfishing. “This is just the beginning,” she says. “We are just starting feasibility work to bring this to Kenya.”

The same logic, she adds, points the industry in a more preventive direction longer-term. Schweigart wants insurers to fund the mangroves, reefs and wetlands that curb flooding and absorb wave energy. “These ecosystems are not just environmental assets, they are infrastructure,” she observes. “Price that protection into premiums, and insurance won’t just help us recover, it will help us to prevent large-scale disasters.”