During a week that had an abundance of news stories directly impacting property and casualty insurers, NU's editors had a choice to make regarding what to feature on the cover of this edition.
Modelers have been estimating insurance losses related to tornado devastation in several states, (page 12). We had reports from the biggest annual gathering of risk managers (page 8), and brokers weighed in on long-awaited upticks in commercial-insurance pricing. In addition, insurers and reinsurers continued tallying first-quarter earnings and the impact of the Japan earthquake (pages 30 and 34).
But after President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden to the nation late on Sunday, May 1, these topics seemed to fade into the background.
Some might argue that the president's news has little direct impact on the insurance industry or buyers of insurance in 2011—that the real story of bin Laden's impact on this industry unfolded 10 years ago when the 9/11 attacks produced some $32.5 billion in insurance losses ($40.2 billion in 2010 dollars according to the Insurance Information Institute).
Early last week, however, experts offered NU reporters relevant commentary about potential effects of bin Laden's death on insurance buyers and sellers today—ranging from changes in terror-risk levels, advances in intelligence used to track down terrorists, and implications for the terrorism-insurance market (page 6).
"While the effect of bin Laden's demise might provide some emotional closure…, in terms of the day-to-day impact on companies around the world and the risks they are facing, I don't see any change. There are still a lot of people who wish the U.S., Canada, and the U.K. ill will," David Guest, war terrorism and political violence underwriter for Hiscox, told NU during the RIMS conference.
But for many of us who were involved in the insurance industry a decade ago, the real impact of the news that moved many citizens to celebration last week was that it surfaced a flood of memories that years have not erased. We remember the loss of more than 500 lives from a community of brokers and insurers. And some of our readers remember being in or near the Twin Towers on 9/11/2001.
The lingering impact on this industry can never be measured in claims dollars, and the most profound messages have little to do with risk-management advice.
Whether you are an insurance buyer or seller, your first response to the president's announcement probably had little to do with either of those two functions.
Susanne Sclafane
Managing Editor
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