I RETURNED last week from Tokyo, where the 31st East Asian Insurance Congress (EAIC) brought together insurers, reinsurers, regulators and business leaders from across the region for three days. I came home with a message I want to share with the Filipino insuring public: the industry, at home and across Asia, is organizing to close the wide gap between the disasters we suffer and the protection we actually carry. The congress returned to the city where it was born in 1964, t

THE magnitude 7.8 Sarangani earthquake of June 8 reminded the country of a figure we have all learned to quote: roughly 98 percent of catastrophe losses in the Philippines are uninsured. Average annual disaster losses run in the order of $3.5 billion. Nonlife insurance penetration remains below 1 percent of gross domestic product. Those numbers describe a structural condition rather than a verdict. We are one of the most hazard-exposed economies on earth, growing quickly, wit

THE squeeze is real, and it is being felt in every household ledger and every company budget in the country. Renewed hostilities between the United States and Iran have sent fuel and energy prices surging to levels we have not seen in years. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea is disrupted, and everything that arrives on our shores by sea — which is to say, nearly everything — now costs more to bring here. Inflation remains stubbornly above target. Food pric

THE Pacific is warming again, and the warning lights are already on. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration has raised its El Niño alert, pegging the probability of onset between June and August 2026 at 79 percent, with European models flagging the possibility of a record-breaking “super” event that could stretch into 2027. The last strong El Niño in 2023 to 2024 cost Philippine agriculture roughly P57 billion. A super event would be

BY the time the next typhoon makes landfall, the question will not be whether Filipino farmers and fisherfolk will lose their crops, livestock and livelihoods — it will be how much, and who, if anyone, will help them recover. The Philippines has the unenviable distinction of being among the most disaster-prone countries on Earth, and our agriculture sector — already battered, undercapitalized and structurally fragile — sits squarely in the crosshairs. The proposed Public-Priv

What every Filipino — and every insurer — needs to understand about the world we are living in now. LET’s be honest with each other. No one planned for this. For generations, Filipinos have survived by being resilient. We pick ourselves up after every typhoon, rebuild after every earthquake, and somehow find a way to smile through it all. That “diskarte” — that instinctive, improvisational toughness — is one of our greatest national gifts. But resilience alone, without a plan

WHEN people hear “Middle East crisis,” they think geopolitics. Insurers think in transmission lines: oil, shipping, credit and household cash flow. For an oil-importing, trade-dependent Philippines, a distant conflict can raise costs at home within days. The chain of events is straightforward. Conflict risk rises, then markets price the possibility that ships will avoid key choke points or that ports and terminals become unsafe. The Strait of Hormuz is the world’s most critic

WHEN the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to midnight on Jan. 27, 2026 — the closest it has ever been to global catastrophe — it was not merely updating a symbol. It was issuing an indictment. An indictment of failed leadership, collapsing cooperation, unmanaged technological risk and a global system increasingly unable to absorb shocks. For many, this warning will again feel abstract — another grim headline in an already anxious world.