GEAB 145

Insurances – The end of the system as we knew it

According to Lloyd’s of London, the insurance industry will have to pay out $203 billion this year and professionals reckon that this pandemic represents the biggest catastrophe their sector has ever suffered. This economic crisis will be coupled with an existential crisis linked to a problem of image: The refusal to reimburse clearly displayed by some insurers such as Hiscox[1]; an awareness in some countries that insurers reimburse cancelled trips or theatre shows, but not health care[2] (when they reimburse anything at all[3]); while States have to give money for reimbursements to insurers when there is a real problem (so people pay twice somehow).[4] All this will combine with the acceleration of the process of monetary, financial and banking digitalisation. Insurance will find itself squeezed between the reactivation of public social and health cover systems on the one hand, and on the other, the digitalisation of a disintermediated financial blockchain system, combining together what were the separate fields of finance, banking and insurance.

The first to be affected by this disintermediation process are the insurance brokers, who now have an interest in quickly repositioning themselves as consulting instead of brokerage (all the more since their customers will find it increasingly difficult to navigate their way in this ever changing domain). But the whole sector will eventually melt down in a process punctuated by crises,