I started searching for a green insurance company in March 2026. The search took so long that I’ve posted the journey in parts.
My definition of green was:
insurance companies REPORTING their GHG emissions using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol [1], doing so CONSISTENTLY, and REDUCING their emissions over time.
I found,
- Out of 4 randomly chosen B Corp insurers, one was persistently reporting and reducing emissions.
- Out of 4 randomly chosen ‘green insurance companies’ rated so by green consumer magazines, one was part of a group that was reporting its GHG emissions (using a reduced Scope 3 reporting framework).
- Out of 4 price comparison websites, one parent company was measuring and reducing its GHG emissions.
- Out of 4 underwriters selected using a matrix, one met all my criteria.
But before concluding, there is one more thing to consider.
Can you be Over Insured?
When it comes to waste management, the five Rs of sustainable resource management are:
Refuse
Reduce
Reuse
Repair
Recycle.
I’m going to argue that there are decision points when you could refuse insurance on the basis that its unsustainable.
If you care about what insurance companies are doing with your premiums, then you have some decision points:
- Deciding to buy and choosing to spend money with a company aligned on values.
- Deciding to buy and refusing to spend money with certain companies that are destroying nature and climate with your money.
- Deciding NOT to buy at all.
Let’s break down the ‘refuse’ part of with two questions.
Do I really need insurance?
We live in a consumer society, with high pressured sales and plenty scare stories to push for more sales. And this applies to insurance as much as other products and services. But there are situations in the UK when you just don’t need insurance.
Here are some of them.
Parcel delivery insurance [2]. As online purchasing grows, more of us are receiving and sending parcels. So you may have been asked whether you want insurance against missing or damaged parcels. But you are likely covered under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.
Extended warranties [2]. While you are also likely to have been asked to extend a warranty on a new smart TV or laptop, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 gives you legal rights to a refund in certain circumstances [3].
Phone insurance [2]. If you keep your phone in your bag, can easily replace it if stolen or broken, then you don’t need insurance. You might also be covered through any home insurance or from a bank account package.
The add-ons you will never use. For instance, if your car insurance gives you a courtesy car in event of accident or damage but you already have another car at home, are you really going to use that courtesy car?. Buying annual family travel insurance might be cheaper than single trip cover (when averaged per oversees trip) but are you really taking multiple trips? [4].
Health insurance in the UK. Our NHS remains the key point of care for UK citizens. While private medical insurance is fast growing, it’s also certain that that prevention is better than cure. We all know the basics – eat mainly whole food, exercise moderately, drink plenty of water, sleep well, and socialize. Only consider private health insurance if you have maxed out on prevention.
Pet insurance. The Competition and Markets Authority investigated inflated pricing in the UK veterinary market, finding that vet prices rose more than double inflation between 2016 and 2023 and the majority of vet practices were owned by the corporate sector [5]. Medical insurance contributes to medical (human and pet) price inflations because it introduces what insurance companies call ‘moral hazard’. Above the premium you pay, the cost of care is not your money – it’s the insurance company’s money. You are insulated from the true cost of care [6] and hence veterinary practices are incentivized to overcharge. Pet insurance (and medical insurance for humans) is often positioned as a ‘solution’ or savior to rising healthcare costs, but ultimately, it’s part of the problem. Unless you have compelling evidence that your pet will benefit, think prevention first.
There is a psychology of sales that when we buy something, we are more likely to buy something on top of it. This principle is used in funnel marketing and the much used add-on (‘do you want an extended warranty with that?’). To save your wallet and the environment, take 24 hours and a cup of tea to think it over, and if you believe the add-on is still worth it, buy it tomorrow.
We also buy insurance to avoid a feeling of regret. You worry that if you don’t buy all the add-ons then maybe ‘something’ (unspecified) will happen later and you will regret not buying it. If you buy to avoid regret, you are not buying from genuine need. Remember, insurance is a safety net… that you take out to avoid ruinous loss. Your heart and soul will be very clear whether the loss would ruin you – it won’t be a debate in your head about whether you might regret the not-buying at some unspecified future date.
How much insurance do I really need?
When have more insurance than you need, you are over insured. This can happen in a few situations.
You insure your assets for more than they are actually worth.
Imagine you are a business that has machinery. If you lost that machinery in a fire, it might cost you £150,000 say to get replace that machinery. But you insured it for £300,000. You are now over insured because the insurer would pay out on actual value of the asset. And the premium you paid to insure the extra £150,000 of asset value has been wasted [7].
A common reason for over valuing assets (house, car, business) is you might be hoping that even though your asset (car, house, business assets and so on) are getting old, your insurer would pay out more so you could replace it with new/better/higher spec. Realistically, they will not.
You have more than one insurance policy that isn’t necessary.
Consider the self-employed who may take out an income protection policy for times they can’t work. It’s tempting to take out more than one policy to maximize benefits. But insurers apply a limitation of benefit clause that will cap payouts at 50% to 75% of your pre-disability earnings as well as reducing further if you get state benefits or have other income. Holding multiple policies means you are paying premiums that will never pay you back [8].
You may have bought an add-on policy features that you don’t need.
A clear example here would be indexation [7]. Indexation is automatic percentage increases to an asset’s reinstatement costs each year in order to account for inflation. In situations where asset costs are rising this can be practical – but again, if actual replacement cost is decreasing, then you are over insured. The easiest way to think about this is your car. We all know that cars degrade in value over time. But imagine you had an indexation feature that you bought into that raised the value of your car over time. You can see how counterintuitive this would be.
For all these situations, insurance operates on the principle of indemnity. Indemnity means putting you back in the financial position you were in immediately before the loss. Insurance is a safety net and is not about making a profit.
In all these situations, buying insurance you don’t need, I’m arguing that its not only a waste of your money, its an opportunity for unethical insurance companies to damage the environment with your wasted premiums.
End of the Search
It’s been a long search to find a green insurer. I’m not 100% certain that I have. But I have learnt a few things along the way.
- Are you certain you actually need insurance… or are you being manipulated by sales psychology. Before you go near an insurance broker or price comparison website, take some time to figure out what you truly need.
- If you do need insurance, define what green means to you. I defined green-for-me as Green House Gas emissions reporting and doing so consistently and showing a reduction. If I had defined green as ‘donating profits to a nature charity’, the search would have been much shorter and less time consuming. However, for me donating profit to a charity but not changing company behaviour is not green.
- Company behaviour was important to me. This is part of definition, but I want to emphasize that I focused on company behaviour rather than products and services on offer. There are plenty of firms claiming to offer ‘green’ insurance products but I wanted to buy insurance from a company that walks-the-talk.
- Green consumer websites are limited. Based on my research over the last few blogs, consumer websites in my opinion don’t seem to be diving deeply enough. They often depend on information in the public domain such as company websites, complaints, scandals and so on to assess a company against a range of criteria. When you are trying to navigate through a maze of false claims and greenwashing, these sites could be a helpful starting place but not a final decision. I rechecked a lauded company three times because they had a high positive writeup from the consumer magazines… but in the end, the company couldn’t meet my specific criteria (back to point 2).
- Appearances can be deceptive. We are familiar with companies greenwashing their products and services, but it can work the other way. A big surprise to me was Go.Compare. This price comparison website doesn’t mention sustainability, but their group met my criteria for green. This comes back to digging deeper (point 7).
- Too much data means we need to reply on proxies. Relying on proxy indicators for ‘greenness’ is necessary because there is so much data out there and I fully expect artificial intelligence to amplify the situation. If you don’t want to do a full fact-find on every company, then proxies become necessary. I used GHG reporting as a proxy but there are plenty ways to fudge GHG reporting even with external verification. Having confidence in the proxy is important since your result is meaningless otherwise.
- Dig deeper. I was disappointed that B Corp in 2026 was an unreliable proxy. There have been numerous complaints across the internet that B Corp self-assessment generally means greenwashing but a strengthening of the B Lab standards and move to external verification from 2026 could mean this opinion changes in the coming years. But for my search, B Corp was not a reliable replacement for digging deeper on an insurance company, which also means digging deeper on the proxy(s) you are using.
And so…
If you are still reading this, you might be wondering what you can practically do when seeking a green insurer to strengthen your financial safety net.
I’d suggest:
First, get clear on what means green for YOU. It might sound like a waste of time but in reality, will save you much frustration during your search because you will have a guide on how to cut through the noise.
Start with proxy indicators that are externally verified and aim for a basic understanding before deciding if they are going to help identify companies that meet YOUR definition of green.
At some point you have to trust your gut. Research and data inform your decision-making but will not decide for you. Research and data are produced from a set of values that may overlap or completely differ to what you, reading this, hold as fundamentally important. Only you can make the ‘decisive choice’ based on your own convictions [9].
References
[1] World Resources Institute (2004/2015) The GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard Revised Edition https://www.wri.org/initiatives/greenhouse-gas-protocol
[2] Good Housekeeping (2024) 5 Insurance Policies Everyone Needs… And Ones You Can Probably Live Without! https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/uk/consumer-advice/money/a26928927/insurance-policies-you-need/
[3] Citizens Advice Bureau (no date) Return Faulty Goods https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/somethings-gone-wrong-with-a-purchase/return-faulty-goods/
[4] HSBC (no date) What to Consider When Buying Insurance https://www.hsbc.co.uk/insurance/what-to-consider-when-buying-insurance/#am-i-being
[5] Association of British Insurers (2025) Analysis of the CMAs Provisional Decision on the Veterinary Market and What it Means for Pet Insurers https://www.abi.org.uk/media-hub/news-post/guest-blog-pet-insurance-an-analysis-of-the-cmas-provisional-decision-on-the-veterinary-market-and-what-it-means-for-pet-insurers
[6] The American Enterprise Institute (2018) What Causes Hyperinflation for Medical Costs in the US? https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/what-causes-hyperinflation-for-medical-costs-in-the-us-medical-insurance-which-is-the-problem-not-the-solution/
[7] Charterfields (no date) What Does Over Insurance Mean and How Can It Be Avoided https://charterfields.com/what-does-overinsurance-mean-for-businesses-and-how-can-it-be-avoided/
[8] Cirencester Friendly (no date) The Pitfall of Over Insurance in Income Protection https://cirencester-friendly.co.uk/blog/the-pitfall-of-over-insurance-in-income-protection/
[9] Weber, M (1946) Science as Vocation. Speech at Munich University in 1918, in, “Max Weber: Essays in Sociology”, pp. 129-156, New York: Oxford University Press