An industry-wide upgrade

ENAR

Times of change and upgrades of operating systems are confusing events, or, in today’s economic lingo, disruptive. Few things can be more disruptive than the abrupt upgrade of a whole industry to a higher level, forcing it into new ways of doing business and, inevitably, altering its whole identity in the process. That’s what’s currently happening to insurance. The upgrade of this industry encompasses on one hand the transition into the digital age, with a host of new challenges in distribution, security, consumer behavior, and, perhaps most importantly, new risks, accumulations and synergies of risks. On the other hand, insurance has been deeply affected by the global transformation of the financial economy and the rise of uncertainty and change triggered a decade ago in the Great Recession, which remains far from over. Since Lebanon’s economic rebirth after the internal warfare of the 1970s and 80s, the insurance industry has made