As the COVID-19 situation is changing on a daily basis, the total impact to the insurance and reinsurance markets remains unknown, and Guy Carpenter is advising clients in the space on how to best adapt to the circumstances. The (re)insurance industry, policyholders and governments throughout the world must come together on an approach that offers relief to those who need it now and develop a plan to implement mitigation strategies and a response mechanism for future pandemic events. The scale of this exposure is immense and far beyond the financial capabilities of the insurance industry alone.
The coronavirus isn’t just a public health crisis. It’s a crisis of confidence in our institutions. Trust in national governments has declined significantly in many countries since the pandemic erupted, and in many countries, people have become less willing to share health and other data to contain the spread of the virus, according to Lisa Quest, Partner, Oliver Wyman Public Sector, and Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics Centre for Risk and Regulation and Douglas Elliott, Partner at Oliver Wyman. Oliver Wyman is an affiliate of Guy Carpenter.
In research conducted by the Oliver Wyman Forum in June, only 47 percent of American respondents said they would be comfortable sharing their health information to help contain the pandemic, down from 54 percent in March. Declines were sharper in Australia and Germany, although the willingness to share health data was higher than in the United States. People are even more reluctant to have data collected for other purposes, such as addressing societal challenges.
