Strong policies support economic resilience
Chinese enterprises will also need to better understand their vulnerability to third-party suppliers, for instance, in order to minimize downtime or closures due to unexpected events. Households in China will also need to improve their resilience against unforeseen major life events like large unexpected medical expenses as well as from the risk of natural catastrophes. To do this, the close collaboration of all stakeholders, including (re) insurers, is needed.
A5 Insurance is a long-term business, and ours is based on long-term projections and trend analyses. We continue to see China as one of the most promising insurance markets in the world over the coming decades and we have not changed our projections and plans. So far, we have seen China's export manufacturing sector affected by trade uncertainties. Domestic consumption may be dampened by softer consumer sentiment but the new measures announced recently should help to shore up demand considering the large domestic market China has.
A6 Foreign investors will benefit from another round of openness in Chinese financial markets. Every time China takes yet another step forward, foreign investors benefit in different ways. Swiss Re has been in China for a long time, and our accumulated risk knowledge and commitment to providing best in practice insurance services and solutions help growth and development. A further opening of the financial markets will expand the risk absorbing capacity of insurers in China, as well as options for investment diversification.
A7 The transformation is already happening. Some of the foremost artificial intelligence breakthroughs are coming out of China. As far as Insurtech goes, a lot of companies are looking at what China is doing. For us, we intend to bring our knowhow, partner that with the best of what Chinese companies are doing and create new value chains and bridge protection gaps. This is expected to have an impact on entire insurance value chains, while at the same time transforming the traditional business model of insurance. Ultimately, Insurtech will offer superior customer experience and help to broaden the reach of insurance that enables China to be more resilient and adopt the necessary risk transfers it needs to develop even further. Our partnership with different Chinese stakeholders to research different tech topics such as understanding the new risk landscape, tapping into new risk pools and enhancing operational efficiency are in place, and we are looking to ramp that up even further. At the same time, we stand ready to share our research and knowledge from other advanced markets with our Chinese partners as we believe this is the way forward to make a connected world even more resilient with the appropriate solutions for each market.
