Building societal resilience

Technological and economic development, population growth, ageing populations and other societal trends are putting people and assets in jeopardy. Swiss Re’s work in the areas of health and longevity, food security and infrastructure represents some of the ways we help build societal resilience.

Building societal resilience, a man playing with his toddler grandchildren (photo)

Our response

Today, billions of people are either uninsured or underinsured for life and health risks. Health gaps are widening, such as those caused by our ageing populations or chronic illnesses like diabetes. At the same time, as the world population increases, so too must global food production. But climate change and soaring food prices pose a serious threat, not least to farmers and the agricultural industry. We share our knowledge, apply new technologies and partner with our clients to come up with innovative solutions to address these challenges.

Furthermore, economic growth depends on investments in infrastructure. However, the funding gap for both maintaining existing infrastructure and building new infrastructure is widening. As a re/insurer and long-term investor, we both underwrite the many projects needed – from transport infrastructure to urban spaces or renewable energy infrastructure – and we provide capital to infrastructure projects to help narrow the financing gap.

With our Top Topic Building societal resilience we connect the dots, and engage our audiences with our expertise and risk knowledge in these areas.

Notable achievements in 2018

  • We launched a digital campaign around “modifiable risk” to coincide with World Diabetes Day, sharing our expertise and solutions aimed at improving the health of policyholders and ultimately prolonging lives.
  • We continued to engage with stakeholders to advocate for the need for stronger standardisation in infrastructure investing, which will be crucial to closing the infrastructure financing gap and supporting economic growth – for example, through our participation at the World Bank Spring and Annual Meetings.
  • Following months of extensive field work and data analysis, we shared key findings about the Asia Health Protection Gap across multiple markets, positioning our insights on the topic with the most relevant audiences (see the related expertise publication).