Insurance industry losses related to the two major earthquakes that hit Venezuela this week are anticipated to represent only a small portion of the billions of dollars in economic losses expected from this catastrophe, according to broking group Aon’s recent Weekly Cat Report.
Northwestern Venezuela, specifically the area west of Caracas, was recently impacted by two successive strike-slip earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.5 and 7.2.
These seismic events resulted in extensive casualties and widespread structural damage.
This specific type of activity, known as a doublet sequence, involves two tremors of comparable magnitude occurring in close temporal and geographical proximity.
Such a sequence suggests a complex process of rupture interaction at the plate boundary, where the South American Plante and the east-moving Caribbean Plate interact obliquely.
This area contains a broad zone of strike-slip faults, including the Boconó, Oca– Ancón, and Bucaramanga–Santa Marta systems, which have generated significant earthquakes in the past.
Northern Venezuela has a history of several large, damaging earthquakes, although the region within 250 km (155 mi) of the recent epicentres has only seen seven earthquakes of magnitude 6.0+ in the last century.
According to the report, the tremors occurring on June 24 2026 will likely become the deadliest in Venezuela, at least since 1812, when a major tremor killed approximately 26,000 people.
Preliminary figures from the disaster include at least 235 fatalities, more than 4,300 injuries, and significant disruption to buildings and infrastructure have been reported.
USGS PAGER estimates indicated that the death toll could be much higher, potentially reaching the thousands or even tens of thousands of fatalities.
Additionally, various tracking organisations currently list between 11,000 and 46,000 individual missing.
“Given the reported damage, the event is expected to cause substantial economic losses to an already strained economy, likely to reach billions of USD or potentially more. Damage assessments are still ongoing, and loss estimates are expected to evolve as further information becomes available.
“Large uncertainty remains in assessing the impact of the event on the re/insurance sector. Total losses to the industry are likely to be only a fraction of the total multi-billion economic loss due to low insurance penetration, no compulsory insurance schemes and perhaps also the lack of events of similar scale and magnitude in recent memory,” said Aon.
