Insurance relationships are fundamentally built on trust between insurers and their customers. Customers trust that insurers will act in ways that ensure their solvency and that they will promptly pay claims when they are due; insurers in turn trust that policyholders will make sure to minimise their risk after signing a policy and that any claims they make will be genuine. Certain shifts such as digitalisation, however, may pose a threat to customer trust as concerns around data privacy, misuse of information and bias or discrimination arise.

Special issue summary

By providing underserved, low-income populations with protection against risks to their livelihoods and health, microinsurance helps poorer segments of society increase their resilience to adverse events. Despite significant development in many emerging markets in recent years, however, large protection gaps remain, many of which have been and will continue to be exacerbated by COVID-19.

• In its new report, The Geneva Association offers a comprehensive projection of the risk landscape in the post-pandemic world, or ‘New Normal’, expounding the four most consequential shifts for insurers: accelerated digitalisation, ‘Big Government’, pivot to resilience and sustainability, and more remote working.
• The study draws on 25 interviews with experts and industry executives and on a 2021 customer survey of

• To support government-insurer discussions on how to close the protection gap for business interruption risk in the case of a pandemic, The Geneva Association has released Public-Private Solutions to Pandemic Risk, outlining four possible government-led schemes: 1) direct insurance, 2) reinsurance, 3) social insurance and 4) post-event protection.

• The first report in this series,