Created in 2011, the objective of the SCOR Corporate Foundation for Science is to support scientific research, which it does in multiple ways: by financing university chairs and specific research projects, by launching calls for projects, organizing conferences, publishing articles, and sponsoring scientific awards. Its actions form part of the SCOR group's long-term commitment to research and the dissemination of risk-related knowledge.

The Board of the Foundation, which met on June 23, 2021, has decided to renew its five-year program for 2022-2026. Along with the Scientific Board, it has decided to focus the actions of the SCOR Foundation for Science on world-class academic research in the following priority areas: 

• Global warming trends over the coming years: could the linear approach used by most experts be misleading, given that many natural phenomena are evolving in a chaotic rather than a linear way? What conclusions can be drawn regarding alternative sources of climate change, other than human activity? 
   
• Trends in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions: should we maintain the hypothesis that these events are completely independent of each other? What are the implications for these events of recent research on terrestrial magma and cyclical variations of the earth's rotation speed? Are they likely to change our perception of the corresponding risks?
   
• The increase in reinsurance liability costs, particularly the cost of suffering: how does macroeconomic inflation affect the cost of insurance liabilities? What has caused the inflation gap between the cost of moral damage and the cost of physical injury? What are the future trends in this respect and what role do the various factors involved (monetary, societal, etc.) play?
   
• The measurement of risk aversion and how it is evolving: to what extent has individual and collective aversion to risk changed with the two crises we have just experienced? Why are individual and collective behaviors in this area often contradictory, with the same people being averse to some risks while seeking out others?
   
• The relevance of scenarios and stress tests developed in financial institutions: what theoretical and empirical lessons can be drawn from ten years of scenarios and stress tests? What are the strengths and weaknesses of these, and what are the most suitable ways to address them profitably and gain insights that are not arbitrary?
   
• The long-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown: what long-term impact can we expect on economic activity, inflation, public finances, monetary policy, health, longevity, social behavior (working from home, etc.), education, skills, productivity, globalization and the location of sensitive activities? What lessons can be drawn for risk modelling and management ?

These priorities will enable us to measure the ongoing shift in the risk universe and to understand the capacity of insurance and reinsurance to cover these risks. 

Over the past five years, the Foundation has focused particularly on three areas of research:  epidemics - including the organization of a conference on emerging infectious diseases in collaboration with the Institut Pasteur and the publication of Covid-19 research; economics and finance - with the publication of numerous research papers on macroeconomics, monetary and fiscal policy, inflation, and exchange rates; and the environment - including the organization of a conference on climate change and the funding of fundamental research on biodiversity by the French Natural History Museum.

All the results of this research are available on the Foundation’s website.

About the SCOR Foundation for Science

Created in 2011, the SCOR Corporate Foundation for Science forms part of the SCOR group's long-term commitment to research and the dissemination of risk-related knowledge. This commitment is an integral part of SCOR’s DNA, as illustrated by the Group’s tagline, “The Art & Science of Risk”. Risk is the “raw material” of reinsurance, and SCOR stays at the cutting edge of risk expertise and research through its vast network of academic institutions, as well as through the support it provides to numerous disciplines including mathematics, actuarial science, physics, chemistry, geophysics, climatology, economics, finance, and more.