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Finance & Insurance

Finance & Insurance

The Finance and Insurance sector is primarily involved in financial transactions and facilitating such financial transactions. This sector includes banks, credit unions, credit card companies, stock brokerages, investment funds, and insurance companies.

CMap

Banks, Credit, and Securities are subsectors primarily engaged in financial transactions, including raising funds, making loans, and purchasing securities. Contact Uses, such as biological additions, physical damage, and biological harvesting, are activities in which humans create pressures through direct contact with the ecosystem. Corporate responses are the general reaction of private corporations and businesses to different issues, such as environmental responsibility. Discharges are the intentional or unintentional distribution of chemicals, debris, or other pollution, into the environment as a consequence of human activities. Economic markets and policies can influence financing and insurance, as well as drive consumer demand for certain types of goods and services. Ecosystem services are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems . The Finance and Insurance sector is primarily involved in financial transactions and facilitating such financial transactions. Infrastructural policies are responses, including zoning, codes, or regulations, that impact the distribution and functioning of socio-economic sectors that provide infrastructure. The insurance subsector includes brokers and agents engaged in selling annuities and insurance policies to pool risk, including health insurance, life insurance, and property insurance. Landscape Changes are alterations of the natural landscape through human activities, including coastal development, shoreline armoring, impervious surfaces, deforestation, or soil disturbance, which can alter water flow patterns and lead to pollutant runoff into coastal systems. The Reef Ecosystem includes a suite of abiotic variables that form the physical and chemical environment. Pressures are human activities that create stress on the environment. The state of the Reef Ecosystem is the condition, in terms of quantity and quality, of the abiotic and biotic components including physical, chemical, and biological variables. Reef Life is the abundance, distribution, and condition of the biological components of the coral reef ecosystem. Regulating Services are benefits obtained from ecosystem processes that regulate the environment, including erosion regulation, natural hazard regulation, and climate regulation. Responses are actions taken by groups or individuals in society and government to prevent, compensate, ameliorate or adapt to changes in Ecosystem Services or their perceived value. Shoreline Protection is the attenuation of wave energy by reefs that protects coastal communities against shoreline erosion and flooding during storms, hurricanes, and tsunamis that can cause property damage and loss of life. Socio-Economic Drivers include the sectors that fulfill human needs for Food & Raw Materials, Water, Shelter, Health, Culture, and Security, and the Infrastructure that supports the sectors.

CMap Description

The Finance and Insurance sector can drive coastal development and contribute to landscape changes, including impervious surfaces, which alter rates of pollutant runoff, or to the need for physical changes to the coastline, such as shoreline armoring. Financial centers benefit from shoreline protection, particularly insurance companies, which are concerned with flood damage or erosion that put property and human lives at risk. Financial sectors also benefit indirectly from other ecosystem services that improve the well-being of sectors, such as tourism & recreation, which drive the overall economy. Corporate decisions and economic markets can influence how financial sectors distribute finances and set insurance rates.

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