Pandemics and the Coverage Gap - Creating Future Solutions

COVID-19 has demonstrated how a single event can trigger a systemic risk, which impacts many businesses, ignores geographic boundaries and creates losses that cannot be absorbed by the insurance industry alone. Protection for losses from pandemics had been offered by the insurers but usually as a specialist cover. With some notable exceptions it was rarely taken out. Now COVID-19 has resulted in a multi-trillion dollar economic problem. Government and business are pointing at insurers and expecting them to help cover the costs. Insurance companies will not survive if they have to pay for a type of business interruption loss that was not priced for in the insurance premium, nor taken out by most of their clients. Companies rarely buy insurance for losses from very unusual or unknown events, but there is now a need to design a system that offers protection against future systemic risks. We're delighted to be hosting this event supported by SAS and bring together three leading thinkers to explore some practical and creative solutions for protecting against future mega-catastrophes including, but not limited to, pandemics. There are now opportunities to use Artificial Intelligence, with an understanding of the mechanism that is driving the losses, distributed ledger technology, and effective partnering of insurers, capital markets, and governments. We can't eradicate the event, but we can mitigate the effects.