COVID-19 crisis and resilience: challenges for the insurance sector

The main role of the insurance sector is the coverage of risks through pooling techniques. Against the payment of a premium, the insurance company compensates for unexpected losses, including catastrophic events and pandemics. However, differently from a catastrophic event, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted that the global impact on economic and financial activities is highly correlated. The insurance sector itself has been strongly affected both by the exponential growth of claims in the life and non-life sectors and by the negative impact on financial activities. Past experiences in pandemic risk management have been unsuccessful. This paper retraces the instruments issued following the past pandemics and tries to reflect on how the insurance sector can implement innovative solutions to support post-pandemic resilience.