Help

BI’s Article search uses Boolean search capabilities. If you are not familiar with these principles, here are some quick tips.

To search specifically for more than one word, put the search term in quotation marks. For example, “workers compensation”. This will limit your search to that combination of words.

To search for a combination of terms, use quotations and the & symbol. For example, “hurricane” & “loss”.

Login Register Subscribe

Insurance industry faces high-impact emerging risks: Swiss Re

Reprints
Insurance industry faces high-impact emerging risks: Swiss Re

Cloud computing security, a contagious emerging markets financial crisis, a eurozone crisis leading to deflation, short-termism of macroeconomic policy measures and a significant increase in air pollution are among the high-impact emerging risks facing the insurance industry, according to a report by Swiss Re Ltd.

The Swiss Re sigma report, published Tuesday, outlines 26 emerging risks relevant to nonlife and life insurance and classifies them as high-impact, medium-impact or low-impact.

The report was compiled using Swiss Re's SONAR tool, which uses the company's internal risk management expertise to identify and evaluate emerging risks.

Medium-impact risks outlined in the report include: concussion risk in sports; consumer use of genetic testing; digital slander; potential health and safety issues surrounding e-cigarettes; increased financial consumer protection regulation; changes from closed to open business models; food and water safety issues arising from companies' focus on growth; secession risks in Europe; one-size-fits-all regulation; the threat to rubber production from plant pathogens; health risks associated with aluminium; so-called smart cities; demographic inclusion in the workplace; and urban farming.

Swiss Re said that low-impact risks include epigenetics, or the study of heritable genetic changes not caused by changes to the DNA sequence; a move to 4-D from 3-D printing; and possible technological changes triggered by the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

“The future is not a simple linear extrapolation of the past,” said David Cole, group chief risk officer at Swiss Re, in a statement. “Rather it is characterized by rapid and continuous change, thus looking back and extrapolating past experiences into the future is not sufficient to assess tomorrow's exposure.”

The report is available here.

Read Next