By: Andreas Berger, Chief Executive Vice President, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions

This article was published here: A world in turmoil demands digital transformation and cooperation | Swiss Re >

"The green bond market still accounts for less than 2% of the value of the global bond market: it is far too small. Stronger action is needed on reducing barriers to investment and international convergence on the taxonomy for climate and green investments." Jerome-Jean Haegeli, Swiss Re Group Chief Economist

Ongoing global crises will renew focus on “real” economy issues. Insurers can help maintain resilience as a new world order takes shape for instance by providing businesses with protection against earnings volatility as operating conditions change, and as investors in a sustainable future.

The world economy regained macroeconomic resilience in 2021, benefiting from the cyclical rebound from the COVID-19 crisis and rising long-dated interest rates during the year. However, we estimate that the resilience lost in the 2020 COVID-19 crisis will only be recouped this year, and any economic deterioration in the coming months may throw the recovery off course.

The global economy is slowing sharply and inflation is at multi-decades highs: we anticipate what we call "inflationary recessions" in many major economies over the next 12-18 months. Central banks are hiking interest rates, targeting price stability over economic growth. In our view, this is a notable positive to the current challenging conditions, on two fronts. It will help ward off 1970s-style stagflation. It also signals the end of the era of financial repression.

Read blog post from Swiss Re Group Chief Digital & Technology Officer, Pravina Ladva:

Every company that uses digital solutions relies on digital trust to engage with customers. If customers don’t trust the digital interactions with your company, you likely won't be in business for too long. But when you look deeper into what actually drives digital trust, you don't find a simple answer, and some of the common assumptions about digital trust turn out to be wrong.

Flood was a common factor among the major global loss events of 2021, and a peril risk managers and the industry should pay close attention to going forward, according to the latest sigma report from the Swiss Re Institute.

Overall, natural and man-made disasters in 2021 resulted in global economic losses of USD $280 billion, the sixth highest on sigma records. Insurance covered USD $119 billion, the fourth highest on record.

As the world starts to reopen and we grapple with other, immediate global concerns, the virus's fate has only one outcome: it will become endemic in our society. Each major variant so far has been more transmissible than its predecessors and brings different symptoms and differing resistances and susceptibilities to vaccines or treatments. Resurgent waves of breakthrough infections, driven most recently by the Omicron variant, in vaccinated populations with waning immunity, remain an ongoing risk to economic recovery and healthcare.

The US is the centre of the world’s third-party litigation finance (TPLF) industry, in which investors such as hedge funds and family offices finance legal action against companies. Of the USD 17 billion investment into litigation funding globally in 2020, more than half was deployed in the US. Litigation funding companies (LFCs) invest in consumer and commercial litigation by funding legal action in return for a percentage of a successful claim sum.

The Swiss Re Institute Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (BES) Index assesses which economic sectors are most reliant on nature and evaluates the exposure each country has to BES decline.