5 Ways the New Coronavirus May Already Be Affecting U.S. Insurers
January 29, 2020 by Allison Bell
China’s new coronavirus outbreak may never cause a significant number of health insurance or life insurance claims in the United States, but it’s already joined two other coronavirus outbreaks — Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) — as something that will shape how life insurance actuaries, investors and regulators see insuring people against the risk of dying for decades to come.
The outbreak may already be big enough to make life insurance think harder about life insurance pricing and coverage provisions related to major contagious disease epidemics.
The new Chinese coronavirus has shown that, even today, with modern diagnostic tools and medicines, and lessons from fighting SARS, MERS and the Ebola virus fresh in public health officials’ minds, keeping new contagious diseases under control can be surprisingly difficult.
In spite of all of the trillions of dollars managed by passive funds that take few or no actions based on current news, the active traders who are still buying and selling stocks sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index down more than 450 points.
Reporters at Bloomberg, CNBC and the Associated Press attributed the drop to investors’ concerns about the impact of the new coronavirus, and efforts to keep the new coronavirus from spreading.
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