Insurance is one of the main ways societies share the cost of misfortune. By pooling many independent risks, insurers can pay the losses of the few from the premiums of the many, and reinsurers spread the largest risks across global capital. This mechanism lets households rebuild, firms resume trading and lenders extend credit against insured assets.
The mechanism depends on conditions that are under strain. Pooling works best when losses are independent, measurable and not too large relative to capital. Climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of some hazards and making past loss experience a weaker guide to the future. Cyber risk, pandemics and supply-chain failures produce correlated losses that strike many policyholders at once. Where risk rises faster than incomes, cover becomes unaffordable or is withdrawn, and losses fall back on households, firms and public budgets.
These failures cascade. Uninsured losses slow recovery after disasters, weaken borrowers, depress property values and add to public debt. Large insured losses, in turn, test insurer capital, raise reinsurance prices and transmit stress to the wider financial system. Understanding these channels is a shared problem for the whole industry, and no single firm can solve it alone.