Thousands of firms are looking to their insurers, and to the state, to cover some of the costs of shutting down
still goes to his office every day on Munich’s Königinstrasse, next to the English Garden, but it is mostly empty. “You are always alone as a,” says the boss of Allianz, who took the reins of the 130-year-old insurance giant in 2015. And never more so than during a pandemic, when you are in charge of 147,000 employees in over 70 countries, who are looking after hundreds of thousands of customers, many of whom are in financial despair because of covid-19.
Thousands of firms are looking to their insurers, as well as the state, to cover some of the costs of shutting down. But neither property-and-casualty nor life-insurance policies generally cover pandemics. This is mainly because the risk is huge and unpredictable, but also because such policies were not until now much in demand. Allianz covers certain elements of a pandemic, such as business interruption for two weeks. But it can only underwrite slices of the risk, says Mr Bäte.
Allianz has many more immediate concerns. As the owner of Euler Hermes, a big provider of credit insurance—which firms buy to protect receivables from loss—Allianz is directly exposed to rising corporate defaults. Mr Bäte vows to try to keep small businesses going by not making drastic cuts to the credit lines it offers with such policies.
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