Coronavirus impact on insurance and reinsurance companies

The coronavirus presently affected more than 114 000 person worldwide. This fast widespread of the virus impacts several business sectors including that of insurance.

The French reinsurer SCOR states that the pandemic won’t be affecting life insurance in 2020. Still for the life insurance sector, the Moody's agency estimates that the impact of the pandemic on global and European reinsurers will be limited, i.e. the consequences will only be significant only at very high levels of gravity.

For property and casualty insurance, the impact of coronavirus will be minimal since standard insurance policies do not cover communicable diseases. However, insurers covering the cancellation of events such as the Olympic Games are more likely to be affected. With regard to the coronavirus crisis, it is on the financial level that the global insurance market will be affected.

On another level, an economic slowdown is already predicted by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) while growth forecasts for 2020 are down by 17%, from 2.9% to 2.4% worldwide. According to Moody’s, the solvency of French insurers will be negatively affected in case of persistence of low interest rates.