Public Sector Risk Financing: Exploring the Potential Use of Weather Derivatives by Fire and Rescue Services

Abstract

The floods of 2007, experienced across much of England, resulted in local authority organisations, including Fire and Rescue Services, mounting large-scale responses and incurring additional and unexpected expenditure. Although central government activated funding schemes, some local authorities fell below the thresholds set and had to absorb the additional costs. This raised a question of what alternative methods were available to allow these local authority organisations to finance such unexpected costs. Weather derivatives are widely used in certain sectors to manage the financial risk that arises from undesirable weather conditions and the objective of this research is to explore the reactions of an FRS towards the use of these financial instruments in managing additional costs, such as those arising from the 2007 floods. Our findings suggest that a combination of risk-aversion, lack of specific financial knowledge and comfort with the status quo seem set to stifle development of weather derivatives as an innovation in public sector risk financing. However, this exploratory study suggests that the method has some merit and is at least worthy of further examination.

Keywords:

• Fire and rescue service
• risk financing
• weather derivatives

Notes

1. Sir Michael Pitt was appointed by the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on 8 August 2007 to head an independent review into the floods (Pitt 2008).

2. Source: Met Office.

3. Source: Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service, Database Analyst.