Munich Re said on Thursday it expected to receive claims for canceled or postponed events because of the coronavirus crisis in excess of 1 billion euros ($1.08 billion) this year after it posted a 65% drop in first-quarter profit.
The German reinsurer, which joins a raft of insurers warning of threats to their business, had already said it would not meet a profit target this year.
In a statement accompanying its quarterly earnings, Munich Re said it was retracting two other profit targets and “faces a significantly higher risk of all its target figures not being attained.”
Finance chief Christoph Jurecka said, however, he would be “very surprised” if the company failed to post a profit in 2020.
“Uncertainty is extremely high,” he told journalists by telephone. “No one knows how this pandemic will develop.”