Ukraine war unleashed year of moving targets & inflation risks: Swiss Re

2022 may be the year of moving targets as Russia's war on Ukraine will continuously change the tilt on the playing field,  Swiss Re CEO Christian Mumenthaler (pictured) has said.

Insurance market conditions are “certainly darker than when we started the year,” Mumenthaler told CNBC on the side-lines of the ongoing summit in Davos, Switzerland.

Crawling out of the pandemic has proven to be of little relief when stepping into a world rocked by the fallout of Russia's invasion, including added fuel for the inflation fire.  “A lot of things have now changed in the past few months.”

The Mumenthaler top of the head new Russia-driven risk list:  fuel crisis, energy crisis, “potential discontent on the street,” and a baseline economic outlook which Mumenthaler describes as “potential milder stagflation.”

“What will be more decisive for the industry is obviously inflation, because this touches all of the reserves,” Mumenthaler said.

Swiss Re remains “very committed to our financial targets,” Mumenthaler said, albeit with caveat that “it is very hard to predict now here in May where the year will end.”

Direct consequences of the war in Ukraine continue to be compared to a mid-sized nat cat event at between $10 and 20 billion. The  Swiss Re CFO John Dacey had recently honed that longer-standing view to the lower end of that range.

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