Welcome to Zero. I am Akshadrati. This week, Hurricanes and Wall Street.

Hurricane Milton has caused widespread devastation across Florida, and that's just weeks after Hurricane Helene.

This is an example of compound climate events, one disaster hitting soon after another.

Something that we've discussed on the podcast before.

If you miss that episode, we've linked it in the show notes.

Today we want to talk

about what Wall Street is doing in the middle of these natural disasters, hurricanes in particular.

There's a whole market of special financial instruments that can help people who've lost their

homes rebuild or make investors rich.

It all depends on the details.

My colleague in London, Gotham Nike, has been reporting on this area.

It includes the kinds of insurance you're familiar with

and the growing market for things like catastrophe bonds.

And this is a global story because Wall Street is selling these not just to rich countries,

but also climate- vulnerable nations that are desperate for any kind of help they can get. So this is the first time we've tackled insurance on zero.

And before we get into the bigger discussion, let's just go over the basics.

What is the easiest way to understand the

financial instrument that is insurance? So there are risks in the world, whether it's a natural

catastrophe or a car accident. An insurance company essentially wants to spread this risk across a

whole lot of people. So everybody pays a premium and insurance company is betting that

only a few people actually get in an accident or have their house roof blown off so they would

pay those claims. But ultimately, the total amount they pay out in claims will be less than the

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