PH insurance industry's response to WEF's 'resilience imperative'

THE World Economic Forum (WEF) has been busy evangelizing on the "resilience initiative" following two "once-in-a-generation" shocks that the world experienced since the advent of the 21st century: the 2008 global financial crisis and the yet-to-be-resolved, Covid-19 pandemic.

These two events, unprecedented in history, have wide-ranging and serious effects on the sociopolitical and economic fabric of many if not all countries. The pandemic alone is causing nearly half the global workforce to lose their means of livelihood with countries such as the Philippines most impacted due to the large swaths of the population close to or already below the poverty line. On top of that, the WEF showed that the "public debt-to-GDP (gross domestic product) ratio is expected to hit 140 percent in developed economies." It is also forecasted that this pandemic will reduce global real gross domestic product growth by 4.5 percent in 2020, translating into a monetary loss of global GDP of around $77 billion.