Nation states must focus on risk management to cope with pandemic risk: Kessler

The Covid-19 pandemic has starkly exposed the lack of preparedness and risk management capability at the national level in France and worldwide, and this must change rapidly, according to Dennis Kessler, CEO and chairman of Paris-based reinsurance group SCOR. In an interview with newspaper l’Opinion last week, Mr Kessler said states have spent too much time and effort patching up their wounds after the event and need to focus on prevention and protection. He believes the adoption of new technology such as tracking devices may provide some answers but needs to be handled carefully from a human rights perspective. Mr Kessler also told the newspaper that the rise of the pandemic cannot be blamed on free-market economics, as has been suggested in some quarters. “Let’s keep saying it: the state must now concentrate all its efforts on public risk management. It has confined itself to a mainly curative, reactive role for too long, patching up its wounds ex-post. And it always seems to act in haste. It must now prioritise prevention and protection. It’s perfectly legitimate for the state to organise prevention, to ensure the ex-ante safety of its citizens. You could even say that this is its original, historical role,” said Mr Kessler. The reinsurance leader said France was less well prepared than Germany or Japan and needs to learn lessons and fast. “It’s striking now to see how this pandemic took all the institutions concerned in France by surprise: hospitals were unprepared, detection capability was virtually non-existent, masks were unavailable, lockdown measures had not been planned, and so on. Some countries, like Germany and Japan, were better prepared and have done a better job of managing this health crisis,” he said. Technology clearly has a big role to play in the effective management and prevention of this pandemic and in future. But how it is used poses some serious questions for society as a whole, said Mr Kessler. “In the future, the state will need to make greater use of technology to be more efficient. Technology can help to contain the pandemic far more efficiently, at a lower economic cost. The scope and the limits of using tracking technology in a democracy will now inevitably be issues for consideration, and that consideration will no doubt stretch beyond health risks. Should we apply indiscriminate measures, general lockdown, essentially curative measures, or should we use targeted, more proactive and preventive measures? Here too, doctrines will have to be reviewed in the quest for an effective way to protect populations,” he said. And international organisations also need to step up their game, said Mr Kessler. “Finally, the virus knows no borders… and international organisations have not really shone during this crisis. All efforts must now focus on developing and implementing regional, national and international systems to make us individually and collectively better prepared to face the next pandemic,” he said. The newspaper posed the question: does the rise of the pandemic prove that free-market economics is out of control? Mr Kessler does not think so. “To say that the free-market economy is the 'guilty party' behind this pandemic makes no sense. We are no longer in the Middle Ages, when we saw in disasters a sign of punishment or divine wrath, coming to strike those who had gone astray. Today we live in an increasingly globalised world, where there has never been such significant movement of people. Clearly, the more people interact, the higher the risk of a pandemic. But this increased movement of people is not exclusive to free-market economics!” he said.

Nation states must focus on risk management to cope with pandemic risk: Kessler

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