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peer-reviewed ; The closure of borders and traditional commerce due to the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have a lasting financial impact. We determine whether the growth in COVID-19 affected index prices by examining equity markets in five regional epicentres, along with a 'global' index. We also investigate the impact of COVID-19 after controlling for investor sentiment, credit risk, liquidity risk, safe-haven asset demand and the price of oil. Despite controlling for these traditional market drivers, the daily totals of COVID-19 cases nevertheless explained index price changes in Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. Similar results were not observed in China, the origin of the virus, nor in the 'global' index (MSCI World). Our results suggest that early interventions (China) and the spatiotemporal nature of pandemic epicentres (World) should be considered by governments, regulators and relevant stakeholders in the event of future COVID-19 'waves' or further extreme societal disruptions

AbstractDiversification plays a pivotal role under the risk-based capital regime of Solvency II. The new rules reward large and well-diversified insurance companies with relatively low capital requirements compared to those of small and specialised nature. To enhance diversification, insurance companies can adjust their strategy by engaging in mergers and acquisitions or new market entries. Alternatively, insurers can accept higher Solvency II capital requirements, displaying a competitive disadvantage and impeding future growth. This research proposes a Solvency II portfolio swap as a new diversification solution that allows small and specialised insurance companies to improve their diversification, and thus, mitigate their diversification disadvantage. The effect of such swaps is demonstrated through the use of two hypothetical insurance companies by swapping 20% of their portfolio over four different scenarios. The swap allowed for a 6% reduction in the Solvency Capital Requirement (SCR) and a maximum increase of the SCR coverage ratio of 17%. With Solvency II posited to stimulate further mergers and acquisitions within the European insurance market, this paper offers an alternative method for insurers to diversify their portfolio. Furthermore, it is suggested that the proposed alternative risk transfer method may improve insurance market competition within the EU by facilitating small and specialised insurers' competitiveness.

peer-reviewed ; Background: From February 2020, both urban and rural Ireland witnessed the rapid proliferation of the COVID-19 disease throughout its counties. During this period, the national COVID-19 responses included stay-at-home directives issued by the state, subject to varying levels of enforcement. Methods: In this paper, we present a new method to assess and rank the causes of Ireland COVID-19 deaths as it relates to mobility activities within each county provided by Google while taking into consideration the epidemiological confirmed positive cases reported per county. We used a network structure and rank propaga tion modelling approach using Personalised PageRank to reveal the importance of each mobility category linked to cases and deaths. Then a novel feature-selection method using relative prominent factors finds important features related to each county's death. Finally, we clustered the counties based on features selected with the network results using a customised network clustering algorithm for the research problem. Findings: Our analysis reveals that the most important mobility trend categories that exhibit the strongest as sociation to COVID-19 cases and deaths include retail and recreation and workplaces. This is the first time a network structure and rank propagation modelling approach has been used to link COVID-19 data to mobility patterns. The infection determinants landscape illustrated by the network results aligns soundly with county socio-economic and demographic features. The novel feature selection and clustering method presented clusters useful to policymakers, managers of the health sector, politicians and even sociologists. Finally, each county has a different impact on the national total.

AbstractCybercrime is estimated to have cost the global economy just under USD 1 trillion in 2020, indicating an increase of more than 50% since 2018. With the average cyber insurance claim rising from USD 145,000 in 2019 to USD 359,000 in 2020, there is a growing necessity for better cyber information sources, standardised databases, mandatory reporting and public awareness. This research analyses the extant academic and industry literature on cybersecurity and cyber risk management with a particular focus on data availability. From a preliminary search resulting in 5219 cyber peer-reviewed studies, the application of the systematic methodology resulted in 79 unique datasets. We posit that the lack of available data on cyber risk poses a serious problem for stakeholders seeking to tackle this issue. In particular, we identify a lacuna in open databases that undermine collective endeavours to better manage this set of risks. The resulting data evaluation and categorisation will support cybersecurity researchers and the insurance industry in their efforts to comprehend, metricise and manage cyber risks.