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First things first — no event happens in a vacuum, not even a global event with the scale and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

If your insurance premiums went up in 2021 compared to 2020, you could perhaps blame the COVID-19 pandemic. Yes, COVID was the big headline … but it wasn’t the only headline.

Many factors affect the insurance industry — and, by extension, the accessibility and affordability of insurance to consumers. Yes, COVID hurt the insurance industry … but so did the prevailing low interest rate environment, because insurance companies hold a lot of bonds on their balance sheets. It’s nearly impossible to point to one event or another as the sole cause factor of a change in the consumer-facing marketplace.

Industry analysts love to make predictions, but they love even more to hedge their bets by saying “It’s too early to tell.” It’s too early to tell is code for “We really don’t know, and we hope that by the time we’re proven wrong or right you’ll have forgotten we ever said anything.”

So, what do we know about the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the insurance industry? Here are a few standout impact areas:

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New data for the impact of a pandemic.

Insurers have known for decades that a global pandemic was possible — it has happened before, and it was only a matter of time before it happened again. The possible impact of a pandemic was priced into most insurance products … but it’s fair to say that those estimates underestimated the impact.

Consumers may have seen their premiums spike up in response to those foiled expectations … but not necessarily for the long term. The COVID pandemic gave the insurance industry a wealth of new data about what might happen during the next pandemic.

The more data the industry has to work with, the more accurate their predictions. This translates to lower premiums because they don’t have to overcharge to account for unknown quantities of risk.

Life insurers pay out big death benefits.

Put simply, the more people die, the more death benefits life insurers have to pay out. COVID-19 claimed the lives of at least 1 million people from infection, to say nothing of increases in suicide, substance overdose, crime-related deaths, and deaths due to delaying of medical care.

Insurers saw net income drop by as much as 50%, with some countries seeing their industry as a whole, post record losses.

Consumers rush to get life insurance.

Despite these losses, life insurers had reason to be hopeful for the future. The global brush with death led to a huge demand for their product. Many people stopped procrastinating and purchased life insurance, leading to a spike in prices and sales up 18% in the first three quarters of 2021 compared to 2020.

Many health insurers waived COVID treatment costs.

While the Federal government never required insurers to waive cost-sharing for COVID-19 treatment, several states did and nearly three-quarters of health insurers did so voluntarily. That waiver is ending, shifting significant costs from insurers to consumers.

Millions lose health insurance.

Since many Americans receive health insurance from their employers, job losses at the height of the pandemic led to 2.7 million Americans joining the ranks of the uninsured during the spring and summer of 2020. Employers currently expect to see higher premiums as they rebuild their payroll.

Decrease in auto claims.

With fewer people on the roads or commuting, auto insurers enjoyed a respite from claim liabilities, since fewer people were crashing their cars.

Increase in event-cancellation and business interruption claims.

Insurers faced a heavy claims burden for interruptions of service and event cancellations — up to a liability of $2-$3 billion if the Tokyo Olympics had been canceled instead of postponed.

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In a sense, it’s appropriate that many factors contribute to the insurance industry because it reflects the business model as a whole.

No one risk factor is a fail-safe predictor that one human will die before another, or that one is more likely to get into a car accident than the other. It’s a complex calculation. Insurance companies make their bones by getting better and better at those calculations over time.

Yes, COVID-19 made a splash in the insurance industry. Its long-term impact? It’s too early to tell.