Covid-19 and Insurance (eBook)

This book offers a novel study on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on insurance from an international and comparative perspective. It assesses how insurance has to adapt to a new landscape, the effects of which will last over time and cut across all areas of the field. To avoid physical contact, digitalisation has accelerated dramatically, affecting insurance in all its phases: risk selection, underwriting, pricing and claims settlement. However, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic go far beyond that. The extent to which a claim caused directly or indirectly by the virus is or is not covered by a given policy has been the subject of debate in many insurance branches.

The most litigated cases worldwide are those that concern damages resulting from business interruption due to restrictions enforced by the authorities in virtually every country. This book analyses the rulings (for and against the insured) that have already been handed down by courts in various jurisdictions (for example in the US, Latin America, Spain and Germany), in order to provide guidance to the parties in future lawsuits and also to guide the courts' own responses. 

This analysis extends to the measures that governments have taken in relation to insurance during the pandemic, as well as the changes that insurers have introduced in their general conditions to exclude coverage for the pandemic. This response is unsatisfactory, as the big question is how pandemic-related risks can be covered if private insurers simply refuse to do so. Solutions based on risk sharing with public entities or the use of contractual modalities such as parametric insurance are among those outlined by the authors.

The book was written by experts from academia and lawyers specialising in this field, and written for all those interested in the field of insurance: lawyers, judges, academics and legal professionals.

María Luisa Muñoz Paredes, PhD (1997), is Senior Lecturer of Commercial Law (Profesora Titular de Derecho Mercantil) at the University of Oviedo in Spain. Author of many publications about insurance law (including several books that are the reference in their fields), she has recently studied the application of AI and big data to insurance. A member of the AIDA Europa Committee, she is Editorial Secretary of the 'Revista Española de Seguros' (published by the Spanish chapter of AIDA) and referee of other relevant scientific journals. In the field of insurance law, she has been speaker at international conferences and has been involved in top international arbitration cases and in the drafting of insurance contract laws abroad.

Anna Tarasiuk is an attorney-at-law and currently the co-owner of Lyszkiewicz Tarasiuk Law Office, dealing with insurance legal matters. She is a lecturer at Kozminski University, the Warsaw School of Economics and member of the Editorial Board of 'Prawo Asekuracyjne' ('Insurance Law') academic quarterly magazine. She has been a speaker at various conferences related to insurance matters. Anna is also an author of various publications on insurance law. She is an arbiter of the Arbitration Court at the Polish Financial Supervisory Commission and a Member of the Presidential Council of AIDA.