Insurability of Emerging Risks: Law, Theory and Practice

This book brings together leading experts in the fields of insurance and the law of obligations to consider how insurance law is attempting to deal with emerging risks. Emerging risks pose significant challenges for the insurance industry. Apart from difficulties in quantifying such risks, the availability of insurance capacity is often a concern. The book looks at these issues from philosophical, economic and actuarial perspectives. It asks how far existing private law rules can cope with emerging risks, and in so far as they cannot, how the law should be developed by courts and lawmakers to deal with the emerging legal issues. The book questions the suitability of the current insurance business models in insuring climate-related risks, autonomous systems, insurance of fines and penalties; as well as how mass or systemic risks (eg pandemics or cyber risks) can be made insurable through ‘add on’ coverages to the conventional insurance policies. It also evaluates governments' roles to encourage insurers to provide cover for such risks and discusses how a balance can be struck between the need to regulate and the insurance markets' dynamics. The book will be of academic interest to anyone working in the field of insurance and also relevant for market participants, policy-makers and regulators.