We started 2024 with an emerging new normal. For the fourth consecutive year, 2023 saw global insured losses from nat cat events exceeding US$100 billion. Secondary perils, primarily severe convective storms in the U.S. and Europe, wildfires in Hawaii and hail in Italy, contributed substantially to last year's insurance claims, underscoring their growing influence and leading to a rethink on how they should be considered in terms of impact. Our 2023 Natural Catastrophe review sits contributions from our academic partners alongside commentary from the WRN team to provide an in-depth analysis on lessons learned and emerging trends. Accompanying the review, our 2024 Natural Catastrophe seminar program will bring together expertise from across our network and WTW to explore key questions spanning a range of perils. We’d love you to join us for these talks.
For many, 2024 will be defined by political events. 2023 saw continued conflict in Ukraine, fresh violence in Israel / Gaza and regional tensions across Africa. The WTW Crisis Management Annual Review includes themes such as the impact of people movements, the increase in active assailant incidents in Europe and the resurgence of state and technology-supported terrorism. 2024 is also being dubbed ‘the year of elections’ – by some estimates more than 4 billion votes will be cast in national polls this year. Against a backdrop of a cost of living crisis, ‘economic voting’ may make it a year of change in many countries and a new report explores what consequences this may have for the world
Our third topic in this newsletter looks at how technology is changing the insurance narrative. Views on Artificial Intelligence range from utopian improvements in productivity, efficiency and collaboration to dystopian scenarios around mass-unemployment, inequality and risks to humanity. In a number of insight pieces, we look at this dynamic and explore how large language models could be poised to become integral to human-machine collaboration across the entire creative process.
Finally we would like to welcome new members to our network. Professor Erica Thompson, from the London Mathematical Laboratory, is a global leader in the application of mathematical models to support real-world decisions and author of the book ‘Escape from Model Land’ and will support work developing our mindful use of modeling. Professor Marcus Stoffel, from the University of Geneva, will work with us on quantifying the impact from rare but catastrophic volcanic eruptions on climate, food security, and society. Volcanoes have been the leading cause of global climate disruptions for most of human history and this work will help shed light on potential effects of a Tambora-style event.
As always, thank you for reading and please do get in touch with any questions.
