IFC and QBE partner to extend Building Resilience Index across Asia-Pacific

The IFC partnered with QBE Asia to expand the Building Resilience Index and address the widening property insurance gap in the Asia-Pacific region. As the first insurer to integrate the BRI framework, QBE signals a model Indian real-estate and financial-sector stakeholders can watch for embedding climate-risk data into insurance and investment.

The International Finance Corporation partnered with QBE Asia, a division of QBE Insurance Group, to expand the Building Resilience Index (BRI) program. The BRI, introduced by IFC in 2021, is a web-based hazard-mapping and resilience-assessment framework that benchmarks the climate vulnerability of real-estate projects. Previously limited mainly to developers, the framework will now extend to financial institutions, homebuyers, and governments, creating a more inclusive ecosystem for disaster-risk reduction across climate-exposed markets.

QBE Asia is the first insurance company to formally integrate with the BRI framework since its inception. The collaboration promotes BRI adoption across vulnerable markets including Viet Nam, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong SAR China, and supports capacity-building through training and technical workshops. Real-estate developers, financial institutions, homebuyers, and governments are affected as climate-induced property losses rise, with a significant share of assets becoming high-risk or uninsurable, threatening economic stability and portfolio-level risk management in low-penetration markets.

IFC and QBE will co-develop insurance products that incentivise resilience, potentially including favourable underwriting terms, broader coverage, expedited claims, and parametric models providing rapid payouts when pre-defined climate events occur. Stakeholders should monitor how QBE's risk-modelling tools combined with BRI's assessment framework enhance underwriting precision and sustainable pricing. The partnership offers a replicable model for integrating climate-resilience metrics into mainstream financial and insurance products that affected entities across Asia's built environment should track.

Key figure — Framework launch: IFC introduced the Building Resilience Index in 2021