Abstract:

The pandemic of the Covid-19 is a significant disruption that affected not only the economic but also the social aspects. From an economic point of view, the Covid pandemic is generally regarded as a global shock, affecting all the areas of economic life. While it is too early to assess the full impact of pandemic on all the economic processes, nevertheless there are areas of the economy which, due to their nature and correlations, are particularly exposed to process disruptions caused by this shock. One of such an area is, unquestionably, the financial system and its institutions, including insurance companies. The aim of this study is to answer the question, whether the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the financial stability of the insurance sector in Poland.

  The following hypotheses are presented in this paper:

• due to the nature of insurance and its functions, the financial stability of the insurance sector is of particular importance for its sensitivity to credit loss,
• the insurance sector, even though it is an element of the financial system, is still less susceptible to the risk of financial stability loss than it is in the case of banks,
• the activity area that may generate the risk of loss of financial stability during the Covid -19 pandemic is not the insurance activity itself, including the payment of claims and benefits, but the investment activity of insurers,
• The changes in the solvency norms of the insurance sector introduced in 2016 have significantly influenced its resistance to shocks since then.