The pandemic has created some extraordinary market conditions throughout the U.S. economy. As people have spent more time at home, the demand for single-family homes and the number of home renovation projects have increased. But what happens when costs of parts and labor for repair become inflated? For submitted home insurance claims, insurance costs will likely be significantly more in 2021 than a similar claim last year.

At least two things came to fruition from the 1960s science fiction TV shows many of us watched as children. First, as the title of this blog suggests, it is now acceptable to split an infinitive (that is, insert an adverb between the word “to” and the verb). Second, although we still don’t have flying cars, it is possible to conduct meetings and converse with people miles away while looking at a screen. This came in quite handy as we planned our 2021 Pinnacle University program.

One of the jarring results of the COVID-19 pandemic has been disruption to the rhythm of our daily lives. Routines, regular activities and traditions have all changed as the result of imposed restrictions, personal safety choices and a mixture of both. In the insurance industry, actuaries and other professionals who rely on patterns such as claim reporting lags and loss development factors are now working to understand how emergency declarations, temporary court closures and changes in insured behavior have impacted these patterns. In this blog, I’ll highlight specifically how changes to statutes of limitations because of the COVID-19 pandemic may affect reporting of medical professional liability claims.

In July 2020, the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) announced that all actuarial exams for their fall exam “sitting” would be administered through computer-based testing (CBT) rather than their traditional pencil-and-paper format. CAS exams are required to become certified practitioners in the actuarial profession. Although multiple-choice CAS exams, MAS-I and MAS-II, were set to be delivered via CBT as part of a long-term goal to transition all exams to the format by the end of 2022, this announcement expanded the program to include exams 5-9. The CAS cited concerns for the safety of all those involved in the testing process amidst the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic as the primary driver for the decision. The organization had canceled all exams in the spring 2020 sitting.

COVID-19 has been of those rare events that has gotten the entire nation and the entire world to stop and pay attention to it. There have been a few of these events that have occurred in my lifetime, including the September 11 terrorist attacks, the hurricane season of 2004, Hurricane Katrina and the stock market crash of 2008. For me, however, the COVID-19 pandemic is the first crisis I have experienced as a part of the workforce. I sat down with Principal and Consulting Actuary Rob Walling to better understand the impact those earlier, notable and older disasters had on insurance, as well as the potential parallels with COVID-19. Rob has experience working with a wide variety of insurance coverages through all of these periods of time and provides a keen perspective to the effects any of these catastrophes have on the insurance industry.