The insurance business in the post-Covid-19 era

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Despite this more than honorable record, the past year will be particularly remembered by insurers whose core business, namely risk pooling, has been in jeopardy.

The post-Covid-19 period is a monumental project with two priority issues: risk insurability and digital technology.

Covid-19 has reignited the necessary recourse to the public-private pooling of systemic risks.

The insurance of the future will no longer be limited to the management of the set of homogeneous risks only, but it will also be open to the underwriting of risks of low frequency but of extreme intensity.

Pandemics, of a given shape and level, not yet defined, will gradually be integrated into insurers’ scope of action. This has been the case for natural disasters and terrorist attacks in the recent past and it will also be the case in the future with cyber mega risks and climate change [2]. Hence the need for a high reinsurance capacity with increased recourse to the financial markets.

Second issue, Covid-19 has played a role in accelerating the digital transformation that has been set as a top priority. It is around new technologies that all the functions and structures of the insurance industry of the future will be organized: creation of new products, search for new markets, teleworking, distance learning, risk management, online platforms, calculation of real commitments, ...

Finally, in a hyper-connected environment, insurers will have to introduce a new management mode to manage fragmented teams, working on different sites or at home.

Although there is a before and after Covid-19, one certainty remains, insurance is a long-term process that can only survive and thrive by respecting the profession’s fundamentals.

Atlas Magazine N°179, March 2021 [1]