On-demand webinar: Covid-19 - Three years on

We began our 2023 series with consideration of Covid-19 and the continued relevance of the pandemic as an emerging risk.

The pandemic was a systemic shock with long-lasting consequences, which have included:

• the worst global recession in 90 years;
• an estimated 114 million jobs lost and around 120 million people in the developing world cast into extreme poverty;
• a reminder of the vulnerability of our interconnected world, with severe ongoing disruption to travel and supply chains;
• a worsening of global inequality, with limited vaccine availability and less than 20% of the USD16 trillion stimulus funds being spent in the developing world; and
• a temporary lowering of CO2 emissions, followed by political instability and a global rush for fossil fuel energy.

In the field of property insurance, the profusion of pandemic-related business interruption claims created challenges for insurance regulators, made new law and encouraged insurers to revise their ‘market standard’ wordings. Some of the most fundamental issues, including those relating to aggregation, are yet to be conclusively resolved. 

Despite catastrophising predictions, Covid-19 had only a muted effect in the casualty space. The mysterious behaviours of the disease in the early stages and its ubiquity thereafter made it a challenging subject-matter for liability claims. 

In the meantime, Contagious Disease exclusions (of varying quality) have become common currency across a variety of policies.

Our seminar provided an update on the current status of insured losses and liabilities arising from the Covid-19 pandemic, and its likely long-term impact on insurers.