COVID-19 Compounds Ongoing Real Estate Insurance Challenges

The global pandemic isn’t necessarily causing a large number of problems around insurance issues in the real estate sector, but it’s clogging up the pathway to making things better.

“The way we’re thinking about real estate and insurance is that, I would argue, COVID-19 is not one of the three driving issues right now in real estate,” explained Jeff Charles, managing director at Gallagher. “The fallout from COVID-19 is an exacerbating agitator for insurance companies right now.”

The three biggest issues in real estate and insurance right now, according to Charles, are insurer performance, capacity availability and problem-solving skills to tackle those issues.

What’s causing these issues? Costs stemming from cat losses, the accumulation of attritional losses and near-zero per cent interest rates, outlined Charles, who will be speaking on these issues on Sept. 15 as part of the Gallagher Talks virtual conference.

Still, COVID-19’s shadow can’t be ignored. On the real estate end of things, the pandemic has created a whole set of concerns around the return to work and the workplace. A lot of effort and consideration has been put into how to get people to return to the office in a safe manner.