1. June 1, 2020 Reinsurance Renewal – COVID-19 Looks Set to Rank Among the Sector’s Most Expensive Events: Although considerable uncertainty remains over its ultimate cost, COVID-19 looks set to rank among the sector’s most expensive events. The pandemic has the potential to bring unknown loss impacts. It is also likely to be one of the slowest developing catastrophes that carriers have ever encountered, likely creating a prolonged period of uncertainty.
2. Hurricane Season – Elevated Storm Activity in the North Atlantic Basin: Current hurricane predictions indicate elevated storm activity in the North Atlantic basin. These include a forecast from The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center of six to 10 hurricanes and three to six major hurricanes, compared to averages of six and two, respectively.
3. How America’s Insurance System Can Prepare For a Future Pandemic: The public-private partnership model is one that has worked particularly well to date for risks that are capable of causing systemic economic shocks, such as terrorism. Dan Glaser, Chief Executive Officer of Marsh & McLennan, authored a recent article in Fortune, discussing how a strong pandemic insurance system can make us more resilient to risk and avoid the panic-neglect cycle — and inspire more economic confidence into the future.
4. A Changing Landscape – How Unemployment Will Impact the Way We Access Health Insurance: The economic impact of job losses relating to COVID-19 will create a dramatic shift in how individuals access health insurance. Approximately one in two Americans is currently covered under an employer-sponsored health plan, signaling that significant job losses have already resulted in millions of Americans losing their health insurance. The next question to ask is how, and if, recently unemployed individuals will access the health insurance market going forward.
5. 2020 Western North Pacific Tropical Cyclone Predictions: The Guy Carpenter Asia-Pacific Climate Impact Centre (GCACIC) at the School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong, has released its 2020 predictions for tropical cyclone formations and landfalls using a regional climate model focusing on East Asia. This model uses information from a global climate prediction model made available in March 2020.
6. Hurricane Season Has Started, but FEMA Is Tied Up With Coronavirus: The Atlantic hurricane season is now officially underway, and The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting it to be a busy one. Meanwhile the U.S. federal government’s hurricane response agency, The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is currently leading the response to coronavirus. Given the likelihood that we will soon see both hurricanes and coronavirus, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should manage the ongoing pandemic response so FEMA can prepare for coming “coronacanes.”
7. Loss Reserve Protection Covers – Amid an Unprecedented Confluence of Headwinds, Solutions for Achieving Capital Optimization: The COVID-19 pandemic clearly presents significant challenges to insurers, but it is also becoming increasingly clear that (re)insurers are likely entering a far more favorable underwriting environment. After years of relative stability brought about by strong capitalization, the landscape for the sector has undeniably changed, with pressure on the asset side of balance sheets coinciding with high natural catastrophe losses, shrinking reserve cushions and social inflation, according to Ed Hochberg, Head of Global Risk Solutions at Guy Carpenter.
8. Lockdown 4.0 and Beyond – A Recovering India: With its decision to extend lockdowns and increase testing rates, Indian Central and State Governments have put in place measures to better manage the COVID-19 contagion curve and alleviate the impact on strained healthcare systems. However, containment is ultimately dependent on therapeutic breakthroughs that are still months away. Curtailing the economic and humanitarian fallout requires the Indian Central and State Governments and industry players to address tougher and more urgent challenges than they ever have before.
9. Financial Market Resilience – Three Waves of Action for Market Infrastructure Firms in the Aftermath of COVID-19: Coronavirus (COVID-19) has had a major impact on the global economy. Financial markets have seen unprecedented activity, such as the MSCI World dropping by nearly 30 percent during a five-week period, with both the supply and demand-side fundamentally upended across the globe.
10. Climate Change is a Global Financial Risk: Climate change will put at risk around 2 percent of global financial assets by the year 2100. A worst-case scenario could see up to 10 percent of global financial assets being at risk by 2100. Such is the scale of the devastation that people should be ready for – and preparations need to accelerate now.
