Wie oft haben Sie in den letzten Wochen den Begriff «Krise» gehört? Wahrscheinlich zu oft. Häufig ist erst in Krisenzeiten zu beobachten, dass genügend Druck auf Management, Mitarbeitenden und weiteren Stakeholdern lastet, um substanzielle Reformen durchzuführen sowie interne Prozesse und das Geschäftsmodell zukunftsfähig zu machen. Dieser St. Galler Trendmonitor beschäftigt sich daher mit den Handlungsmöglichkeiten von Unternehmen in Krisenzeiten – unter anderem mit diesen Themen:

• Integrierte Krisenkommunikation
• Versicherer als Stakeholder in Unternehmenskrisen
• Szenarien zur weltwirtschaftlichen Lage
• Ready and Resilient: Post-Covid-19 Strategies for Insurers
• The Adaptive Insurer Hit by the Covid-19 Crisis
• Aktuell: Wichtige Trends im digitalen Marketing
• Aktuell: Sind Ökosysteme die Zukunft der Assekuranz?

Das Magazin «I.VW Management-Information» ist seit nunmehr 40 Jahren der Trendmonitor des I.VW für die deutschsprachige Assekuranz. Als Teil der Future.Value-Leistungspakete kann das Magazin exklusiv von den Mitarbeitenden der Future.Value-Partner kostenlos bezogen werden. Die Bestellung des Magazins (PDF oder physisch) erfolgt über das Formular auf unserer Website: https://www.ivw.unisg.ch/trendmonitor/#aktuelle-ausgabe

Schauen Sie sich hier unsere redaktionelle Zusammenfassung dieser Ausgabe an!

Die aktuellen Reserven der Schweizer Krankenkassen belaufen sich auf ca. 11 Milliarden CHF und die momentane Solvenzquote der Krankenkassen beträgt 150%. Der Bundesrat möchte diese Quote nun Senken und dadurch Reserven abbauen, was die Prämienentwicklung beeinflussen wird. Angesichts der COVID-Pandemie ist ein Abbau der Reserven ein heikles Vorgehen.

In einem Videobeitrag äussert sich Prof. Dr. Martin Eling, Direktor des I.VW-HSG, zum Thema «Prämienentwicklung und Solvenzlage der Schweizer Krankenversicherer».

Die gesellschaftliche Realität hat sich in den letzten Jahren massiv verändert. Die Altersvorsorge hingegen steckt noch in den achtziger Jahren fest. Für Prof. Dr. Martin Eling ist angesichts der gesellschaftlichen Veränderungen das Reformtempo in der Altersvorsorge zu langsam.

Welche Anpassungsvorschläge er und andere Experten anbringen, können Sie im ersten Teil («Vorsorgen für eine neue Welt») der zwölfteiligen NZZ-Serie aktuell nachlesen.

The rise of blockchain technology enables a fully automated decentralized autonomous risk transfer. The upcoming Lecture on March 23, 2021 at 6 PM CET will be held by Prof. Dr. Alexander Braun and PhD Student Niklas Häusle from the Institute of Insurance Economics at University of St. Gallen (HSG).

In this 2-hour session, you will not only learn about the functionality as well as operating principles of this new method of risk transfer. You will also get an overview of the corresponding institutional arrangement and its challenges. At least two major challenges can be identified: Ensuring the quality of the product and attaining a critical network size. A feasible solution for these problems is the usage of system-specific tokens, which are used as a form of digital collateralization. How these theoretical concepts can be translated into practice will be explained while demonstrating the economic potential of the idea. While flight delay risk is already handled through decentralized autonomous risk transfer, the biggest benefits can be realized by decentralizing crop and hurricane insurance, including a seamless transfer of the risk to capital markets.

This Meetup is free to attend and can be accessed via Zoom.

Wie sinnvoll sind Pandemie-Versicherungen? Die Versicherungsbranche arbeitet an einem Modell mit Staatsbeteiligung. Prof. Dr. Hato Schmeiser im SRF-Interview «Echo der Zeit» zusammen mit Stimmen aus der Praxis.

Kürzlich wurde auch ein I.VW Policy Brief zu diesem Thema veröffentlicht:

I.VW Policy Briefs Insurability (8.01.2021).pdf

We propose a mechanism for the incentivization of workers in decentralized autonomous organizations instantiated on the blockchain. Our approach relies on staking, a digital form of collateralization that requires network participants to acquire cryptographic tokens and deposit them in a smart contract or bound wallet. In case of worker malfeasance, the collateral can be reallocated to the customers to compensate them for their losses. We use the nascent decentralized insurance market as a laboratory to apply our model based on real-life data and show that relatively small stakes are sufficient to maximize network throughput, which is equivalent to welfare.

Please find the full SSRN working paper of the authors Alexander Braun, Niklas Häusle (both I.VW-HSG) and Stephan Karpischek (Decentralized Insurance Foundation, Zug) on the Link below.

The Journal of Service Research has accepted a current research paper, co-authored by Martin Bieler, Prof. Dr. Peter Maas, Lukas Fischer (all I.VW-HSG) and Dr. Nele Rietmann (ICI-HSG) for publication. The article «Enabling Co-Creation with Transformative Interventions: An Interdisciplinary Conceptualization of Consumer Boosting» develops a new theory on how consumers can be guided towards better decisions, as well as a new method for interventions into consumers’ decision-making processes.

To that end, it draws on existing knowledge in the areas of consumer psychology, transformative service research, and research on intervention mechanisms such as nudging. It finds that to efficiently support consumers in their situated decision-making processes, service providers need to have various intervention mechanisms to choose from. Specifically, there need to be mechanisms which immediately help consumers make a decision, as well as mechanisms which sustainably increase decision-making competencies.

The latter can be achieved with the new intervention “Consumer Boosting”, which helps consumers make better decisions through the development of relevant competencies in a context-specific, personalized manner. Consumer boosting increases the potential for mutual service creation even when consumers make decisions outside of service firms’ immediate reach and is especially suited for digital consumer interactions.

The article provides criteria for the selection and the design of intervention mechanisms in specific situations. Potential areas of application are especially those with high knowledge requirements and complex decision tasks, such as financial services or health. The online first publication of the article is expected shortly.

The co-author Martin Bieler can provide an executive summary on request. Please contact him for further details.

How can insurers be held liable in the future for the lack of insurance coverage for pandemic-related business interruptions? Will there be some form of loss-sharing agreement between insurers and governments in the future? What specific challenges will insurers face on a global scale?

These and other questions will be discussed in the OECD’s online seminar on March 23, 2021 at 3 p.m. CET together with officials from ministries of finance and insurance regulators as well as representatives from the global insurance industry.

During this online seminar, Prof. Dr. Alexander Braun, Associate Professor at I.VW-HSG, will moderate a discussion with renowned representatives of the insurance industry on the topic of “Challenges in insuring pandemic-related business interruption”, in which he will highlight the challenges that exist in quantifying future pandemic risk and in the magnitude of potential losses, as well as the difficulty of diversifying global risk.