Insurance and September 11 One Year After

Much has already been written on the September 11 attacks and their impact on our lives. The perspectives, from the political to the social, from the philosophical to the economic, are as diverse as the backgrounds and the motivations of their authors. The Geneva Association, taking - due to the nature of our research organisation - a strategic macroeconomic view of events, first thought that producing an overview of the impact of September 11 on the national insurance markets would be enough to complement the work that has been going on in other institutions and insurance companies. However,
after receiving such extraordinary encouragement from many different quarters, including political and media ones, we decided that there was indeed a further role to play. We needed to highlight the key issues that the insurance industry has been, is and will be facing as a consequence of the September 11 attacks. We strive not only to research in abstract terms but also to create and disseminate a better understanding about the direct effects of the events themselves as well as their impact on the mechanisms of insurance and the relevance of insurance as a basic and fundamental tool in the organisation of our modern economies.