The current financial and economic uncertainty, as well as the rising cost of living, may lead policy makers, regulators and supervisors to postpone reforms that could improve their pensions systems. However, delaying needed reforms would put at risk the well-being of current and future pensioners. Policy makers should continue to improve pension systems, according to a new OECD report.

Insurers' exposures to macro and market risks are currently the main concern for the insurance sector, is the finding of EIOPA's Risk Dashboard based on Solvency II data from the second quarter of 2022. All other risk categories, such as profitability and solvency, climate as well as digitalization and cyber risks stay at medium levels.

German insurers recently warned consumers not to engage in risky "experiments" as they try out makeshift alternatives to heat their homes as the nation navigates an energy crisis, Reuters said.

Insurers may need to focus on maintaining customers, even if that does result in profit declining in the short term, as SMEs are struggling the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, which is likely to heavily impact the commercial insurance sector making renewals and keeping penetration rates up a challenge, GlobalData says.

"Nothing undermines sustainable development like disasters," asserted United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in hir foreword to the sixth edition of the United Nations Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction 2022 - "Our World at Risk: Transforming Governance for a Resilient Future comes at a critical time for the future of humanity."

Verisk Extreme Event Solutions released its 2022 Global Modeled Catastrophe Losses Report detailing key global financial loss metrics based on its latest suite of catastrophe models. Verisk estimates that on an annual average basis, catastrophes around the world are expected to cause about USD 123 billion in insured losses compared to an average of USD 74 billion in actual losses over the past 10 years.

A highly complex risk environment caused by influences within and outside of the sector, coupled with the evolving dynamics of a hardening market, are generating significant volatility within the reinsurance sector, yet there is much to inspire confidence amongst (re)insurers, panelists at a recent virtual media briefing hosted by Guy Carpenter concluded.

20 years on from the devastating floods which had a large impact on Germany's and Austria's economy and became the costliest natural disaster event on record in the Czech Republic, Aon has published an analysis that is looking back on the event and how flood models have evolved to provide better risk management.

The four largest European reinsurers - Munich Re, Swiss Re, Hannover Re and SCOR - reported a 47% decline in combined net profits for the first 1H 2022, reflecting high natural catastrophe (nat cat) claims and weaker investment returns. While reinsurance policies have renewed at substantially higher prices this year, claims inflation has partly offset the gains, Moody's said in its latest report. (link la download)

According to a natural disaster review for first half of 2022 released by global reinsure Munich Re, the period January-June 2022 saw lower natural disaster losses than in the comparative period of 2021. "Floods, earthquakes, and storms caused overall losses of some USD 65 billion compared with USD 105 billion in the loss-heavy previous year. At around USD 34 billion, insured losses were roughly in line with previous years".

The preliminary 2021 figures show Europe's reopening economies seeing rebounds in insurance premiums, albeit at different speeds. In most of the reporting markets, total premiums grew compared with the pre-pandemic year 2019, reads the latest Insurance Europe report on the evolution of the European insurance market in 2021*.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine immediately slowed the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and set the global economy on a course of lower growth and rising inflation, the OECD's latest Economic Outlook shows. Strong exposure to the conflict region has put additional pressure on most Eastern European economies.

With almost 75% of organizations experiencing at least one cyberattack, cyber resilience is now more important than ever, reads the latest report issued by Marsh and Microsoft on "The State of Cyber Resilience".

The Eurozone is facing the highest price pressures since the 1970s, a recent study released by Allianz Trade shows. Headline inflation reached 7.5% y/y in April (up from 7.4% y/y in March), with almost 60% explained by energy inflation. Europe has been hit particularly hard, given its stronger reliance on energy imports and the recent depreciation of the euro to a five-year low against the US dollar. How bad can it get?

While the war in Ukraine will have minor direct consequences on the insurance industry, the indirect consequences, such as the capital markets volatility or the poorer growth prospects, will weigh more heavily, chief economists of Swiss Re, Munich RE and Allianz said in a discussion hosted by GDV.

Natural catastrophes in 2021 resulted in a total global economic loss of USD 270 billion and insured losses of USD 111 billion, the fourth highest on sigma records, thus continuing the long-term trend of insured losses increasing by an average of 5-7% annually worldwide, the latest report issued by the Swiss Re Institute reads.

Across ten major countries, face-to-face communications dropped dramatically in 2020 while online and phone communications increased. The shift to digital is likely to last, over half of all respondents to a recent Finaccord expect to buy insurance online more often after 2020.

In their newly published Economic Outlook 2022 report, Allianz Research takes a look at the global economic trends and identifies the main developments for 2022.

Aon plc published its 2021 Weather, Climate and Catastrophe Insight report, which evaluates the increasing frequency and severity of disruptive natural disasters and how their resulting economic losses are protected globally. The report shows 38% of natural peril losses were covered by insurance, an improvement from last year.

Last year was the second-costliest ever for the insurance sector, says Munich Re, quoting overall losses from natural disasters of USD 280 billion in 2021, 43% of which being insured. Many of the weather catastrophes fit in with the expected consequences of climate change.