Today, we formally announced that leading carbon registry Gold Standard has approved Oka’s Corresponding Adjustment Protect™ as a conditional insurance policy for project developers seeking access to the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) market.

For the Oka team, this is more than just a significant milestone for the business: it is an important validation of our starting thesis. From 2027, CORSIA will be mandatory for hundreds of airlines across 129 countries. Its global adoption and high stakes have made insurance — once a peripheral safeguard — an urgent fixture and structural pillar of carbon-market infrastructure.

Following a December 2024 recommendation from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), leading carbon registries signalled insurance would be a prerequisite for CORSIA-eligible credits. Gold Standard is the first to release its list of approved private policies, culminating a three-month assessment and over a year of engagement.

Designed and released in the first half of 2024, Corresponding Adjustment Protect™ is the world-first policy tailored to CORSIA Eligible Emissions Units (EEUs). It insulates buyers and sellers against corresponding adjustment failure: where the developer’s host country authorises credits for international trade only to fail to register the ‘corresponding adjustment’ that would ratify the authorisation, thereby voiding issued or retired credits. In so doing, the policy protects seller against financial and buyer against reputational and regulatory risk, while also ensuring the integrity of any associated environmental claim.

As of today, Oka is one of just two private insurance providers (one of three in total) on Gold Standard’s list. The approval validates our first-to-market policy design and positions Oka as a primary counterparty for insured CORSIA transactions as activity scales.

Even two years ago, both traditional insurers and carbon market participants viewed carbon insurance as a novelty. Its formal adoption under CORSIA marks a turning point. The first global mandatory offsetting scheme is embedding the mechanisms that define a mature market: confidence, accountability, and scale.

The new carbon-market case under CORSIA

CORSIA is expected to drive a multi-billion-dollar demand surge for high-quality offsets, as sustainable aviation fuel deployment continues to lag — and air traffic, beat — earlier projections. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) last month revised its 2024-2026 demand forecast to 237 million credits — an increase of almost 50% on last year’s estimate.

While a potential US retreat would shrink international offsetting requirements by 14%, elsewhere in the world, governments are adding teeth and effectively locking in demand. Several jurisdictions (the UK, Brazil) have introduced concrete non-compliance penalties, while others are finalising enforcement frameworks (Canada, Japan, the UAE).

Rather than wait for mandatory compliance to enter effect in 2027, airlines are accelerating forward purchases to hedge price and availability risk. Eligible credit supply remains tight. ICAO anticipates a shortfall of tens to hundreds of millions, with 2027 price expectations firming towards $36 in a base-case and $60 in a supply-constrained scenario. BloombergNEF predicts price-per-tonne could reach as high as $97 by Phase 2.

This backdrop rewards participating projects and brings forward capitalisation through forward contracts, with insurance now explicitly enabling financing (for developers) and earlier retirements (for airlines). Oka’s sales pipeline reflects this momentum, as a growing influx of developers prepare to transact under the Gold Standard approval framework — more on which we look forward to sharing in the coming weeks.

But the case for insurance does not begin and end with CORSIA. Undeterred by the US’s retreat from climate policy, domestic carbon markets and taxes elsewhere in the world continue to propagate, accelerating the convergence of compliance and voluntary markets. Under these ‘hybrid’ frameworks, the stakes are higher — and the case for insurance, clearer.

Looking ahead

Oka was founded on the premise that insurance would be critical to scaling carbon markets. Today’s announcement confirms that view. Working hand-in-hand with Gold Standard and Howden over the last 18 months, we have crafted a product that opens doors for developers to tap into a new and exciting market.

This was never about ticking boxes, but rather about understanding the regulatory landscape at the UNFCCC level, persistently championing the role insurance can play as a social good in this space, and creating a blueprint for how insurance can drive capital into climate solutions.