How COVID-19 is reshaping risk management

Analysis June 03, 2020 at 12:00 AM
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As an enterprise rooted in dramatic lessons from the past, the insurance industry can claim a uniquely twisted relationship to the old saying, Fool me once? Shame on you. Fool me twice? Shame on me! Jeff Moseley, CEO of the Texas Business Association, reflected on the way back-to-back catastrophes shifted perspectives in his state during the recent webinar "Building Resilient Businesses and Communities in the Time of COVID-19," which was co-hosted by the Insurance Information Institute and ResilientH2OPartners, a public-private partnership consultancy. In 2005, Moseley recalled, Texas communities were adjusting to a swell of Hurricane Katrina refugees from Louisiana right as Hurricane Ike arrived and forced mass evacuations. "There were some very sad stories about how people lost their lives leaving the Houston area, and we learned from that," Moseley said. "We learned that we can do things differently. So when Hurricane Harvey came along, there was a systematic, thoughtful way of saying, if you live in this ZIP code, you probably need to leave. But if you live in these other ZIP codes, you need to bunker in place." Fast forward to today, and insurance, along with every other industry, is processing lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic to apply to the next, inevitable "black swan event." NU Property & Casualty recently asked a cross-section of insurance and risk professionals how they thought the novel coronavirus outbreak might impact risk mitigation in the future. The slideshow above features a selection of their responses. Related: