The Tech Trend Radar 2026 tracks around 25 technology developments across Data & AI, Healthy Human, Cyber & Crypto, and Redefining Industries. Each development is assessed against a maturity scale from Hold to Adopt, reflecting how close the trend is to shaping real business decisions.

Climate Risk & Resilience is firmly in Adopt territory. The reasoning is straightforward: weather-related insured losses from natural catastrophes regularly run into the tens of billions of US dollars and have been climbing for years, driven by a mix of man-made climate change and natural variability such as El Niño and La Niña. The strongest upward trend in many regions sits with high-frequency weather events like severe thunderstorms, hail, floods, and wildfires. These non-peak perils increasingly shape the loss landscape, and the industry continues to evolve its models beyond historical averages to capture them.

The insurance sector has been raising awareness of these shifts and embedding them into pricing and risk management for years. The next step is to operationalise that knowledge even more tightly in day-to-day decisions.

Insurers and brokers have access to more natural hazard information than ever: scenario layers, event footprints, live catastrophe feeds, and granular location data. The current challenge is making all of it usable at the point of quote, in portfolio reviews, and during catastrophe response, in a consistent and auditable way.

Within the Climate Risk & Resilience chapter, the Tech Trend Radar 2026 frames four areas where climate intelligence creates measurable value:

• In underwriting, hazard data supports risk evaluation at the point of quote, and live event monitoring allows automatic enforcement of risk controls.
• In portfolio management, exposure analysis of historical event footprints helps identify concentration risks and supports strategic rebalancing.
• In client advisory, location-specific insights help brokers guide clients toward protective measures that improve insurability and long-term resilience.
• In claims, near real-time event data accelerates response times and supports efficient handling during catastrophes.

Each of these use cases depends on the same foundation: reliable hazard and location intelligence that integrates into existing workflows.

Location Risk Intelligence is Munich Re's modular platform for exactly this purpose. It provides access to natural hazard and climate-related data, and integrates event monitoring and automated risk controls directly into underwriting and policy administration systems.

Two functions stand out in the Tech Trend Radar 2026 coverage:

• The Events feature shows historical and ongoing natural catastrophes including tropical cyclones, floods, and wildfires. Underwriters can identify exposed policies during live events, estimate potential insured values within affected areas, and use post-event data to verify loss locations and prioritise claims handling.
• The Binding Restrictions service automates decisions about quoting or binding new business in areas affected by imminent natural catastrophe risks. Integrated into an underwriting platform, it pauses new policy issuance until the threat subsides, applying risk appetite consistently and reducing the burden of continuous manual oversight.

Together, these functions help insurers sharpen an already risk-aware approach: combining established actuarial strength with near-real-time event visibility and portfolio-level resilience.

The Tech Trend Radar 2026 makes a broader point that applies well beyond natural hazards: technology creates value only when paired with human judgement, responsible implementation, and integration into the workflows that drive real decisions.

For natural hazard and climate-related risk specifically, that integration is what distinguishes insurers who merely report on exposure from those who steer it actively. Real-time event intelligence, automated underwriting controls, and portfolio-level visibility are the operational baseline the Tech Trend Radar 2026 expects insurers to be working with in 2026.