Reading Time: 8 minutes The arrival of a team by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Beirut for negotiations on the national need for financial assistance under a rescue package has sparked a wave of discussions on the task. This interest is fueled by widespread concerns that the latest official draft plan—based on a paper by international financial firm…
The need to develop an integrated approach on COVID-19
Reading Time: 7 minutes The real-life specter of SARS-CoV 2 comes across as existentially frightening. With the virus being as familiar as a seasonal respiratory disease and yet totally untamed by possibilities of existing immunity, it reminds many of a scary scenario in popular fiction (remember that Stephen King one about the bad dude living in Texas and the…
Q&A with actuary Ibrahim Muhanna on insurance liabilities amid economic crisis
Reading Time: 6 minutes Practically every private household in Lebanon relies on one or other insurance service, beginning with the mandatory protection of motorists under third-party liability insurance or savings schemes offered by life insurers. Services such as health and pension insurance are becoming focuses of attention as the country’s healthcare and employment systems are increasingly challenged. Commercial lines…
The Lebanese insurance scenario amid threats of global collapse
Reading Time: 16 minutes Judging from the numbers at the tail end of the third phase in the Lebanese lockdown and the start of the transition to a winding-down phase, the picture is flawless from the medical and from the insurance supervisory angle: Lebanon’s case count of severe COVID-19 illnesses up to the second half of April 2020 has…
Confused outlook on insurance coverage for Lebanese COVID-19 patients
Reading Time: 5 minutes In the immediacy of the coronavirus crisis, the most pertinent insurance question for the holder of a medical policy is simple: Who will pay if I need to be hospitalized? The answer, as with many things in Lebanon, depends. According to Nadine Habbal, acting head of Lebanon’s Insurance Control Commission, slightly more than half of…
Q&A with Nadine Habbal, acting head of the Insurance Control Commission
Reading Time: 5 minutes Lebanon’s insurance sector is highly fragmented, featuring extreme competition between small local players, bank-affiliate insurers, providers that are parts of multinational insurance giants, and—outside of the regulated sphere of commercial insurance companies—even quasi-insurers with competitive privileges that are categorized as mutual funds. The diverse and overpopulated sector, mired in opacity of companies, has not been…
Leaked Lebanese government reform plan addresses lira peg head on
Reading Time: 15 minutes “The existing dual exchange rate is not suited for the long-term recovery of the Lebanese economy, because of its distortionary nature and the limited availability of FX-resources in the parallel market.” The Lebanese Government’s reform program, April 6 draft Chained to the dollar for the longest time under a policy favoring partisan interests—but not Lebanon’s…
How coronavirus could bring about a historic chance for change
Reading Time: 24 minutes About two months ago, the assumption was that in terms of viral speed, the only things spreading faster than SARS-CoV2—the coronavirus’ official name—would be coronavirus rumors and fears. This view could pass as news of the month at the time when World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Ghebreyesus explained to the world that there…
The jobsforlebanon initiative envisions a new labor paradigm for Lebanon
Reading Time: 7 minutes For those who are addicted to adrenaline rushes from springtime thrill rides, March 2020 may very well be as good as it can ever get. But only as far as the thrills of being exposed to the mother-of-all economic shocks. For the large majority of us, it is a world-engulfing nightmare. For the Lebanese, it…
Q&A with the team behind jobsforlebanon
Reading Time: 11 minutes They want to bring jobs to jobs-starved Lebanon. They also want to do something that has been tried many times and rarely been crowned by success: mobilize direct investments into Lebanon from the country’s large global diaspora. Specifically, they want to seed job investments—work opportunities that can be located anywhere in the world, yet be…