Restoring resilience: the need to reload shock-absorbing capacity

Sectors and Themes
Disaster Risk Reduction
Economic Recovery
Scale
National
Expertise Level
Practitioner
Specialist
Resource Type
Guidance and Frameworks
Analysis Tools
Language
English
Developer or Source
Swiss Re Institute

From the COVID-19 pandemic to war in Ukraine and 40-year high inflation in major economies, the world has faced extraordinary shocks in recent years. Given the vast economic policy shifts in response, it is vital to understand what drives risk absorption, the contribution of insurance, and the actions which can be taken to restore resilience.

Resilience is measured as how well an economy, business or household can withstand an unexpected financial shock such as a natural catastrophe or the death of a breadwinner. Swiss Re’s index of macroeconomic resilience captures the extent to which an economy can withstand a shock such as a recession; and their insurance resilience indices measure how insurance contributes to maintaining households' and businesses' financial stability by transferring or absorbing key risks to life, health and property. The protection gap is the uninsured or unprotected portion of the resources needed to fully mitigate a risk.

This publication is a resilience index, which analyzes and ranks macroeconomic resilience for 31 countries and highlights the global protection gap of uninsured resources for 2022.