Reinsurance News

Flood insurance and reinsurance news

News related to flood insurance and reinsurance, including: new products and market innovation; flood insurance market loss events; companies underwriting flood insurance or reinsurance; public flood insurance through the NFIP; and the expanding availability of private market flood coverage.

Flood risk continues in Louisiana as Storm Barry crawls inland

15th July 2019

The impact of Storm Barry in Louisiana appears to have been better than initially feared, but authorities have warned that the risk of flooding remains high as Barry continues its slow crawl across the state. Barry made landfall 160 miles west of New Orleans on Saturday as a Category 1 hurricane, ... Read the full article

Flood Re lays out new flood resilience proposals for UK homes

8th July 2019

Government-backed reinsurance scheme Flood Re has announced a series of proposals designed to increase the flood resilience of UK homes. Flood Re hopes to work with insurers on “building back better homes” after a flood event and would permit the payment of claims to include an additional amount for certain repairs ... Read the full article

JBA & insurtech Floodflash create parametric flood policy

27th June 2019

Global flood risk modeller JBA Risk Management has partnered with insurtech firm Floodflash to create a UK parametric flood insurance policy. The new product, which JBA and Floodflash claim is an industry first, will provide bespoke insurance for policyholders in frequently flooded areas who have traditionally struggled to obtain cover. It will ... Read the full article

AIR Worldwide updates flood models for Central Europe & UK

25th June 2019

AIR Worldwide, the catastrophe risk modelling arm of Verisk Analytics, has released an update to its inland flood model for Central Europe and coastal flood model for Great Britain. The domain of the inland flood model for Central Europe has been expanded to include the country of Poland. This model features rainfall-runoff ... Read the full article

Genstar partners with Atlas on DIC program for earthquake & flood

20th June 2019

Genstar, a subsidiary of General Reinsurance Corporation and member of the Berkshire Hathaway family, has partnered with Atlas General Insurance Services on the launch of a new Difference in Conditions (DIC) program. The program will be administered by Atlas, and include coverage for earthquake, earthquake sprinkler leakage, and flood. “GenStar is excited ... Read the full article

Economic losses from June flooding in south-eastern China hits almost $2bn: Aon

17th June 2019

Severe flooding from heavy rainfall that hit a number of provinces in south-eastern China during the first two weeks of June is expected to result in economic losses of almost $2 billion (CNY13.35 billion), with the majority of this unlikely to be covered by insurance protection. The latest weekly catastrophe report ... Read the full article

Fathom launches updated US flood model via ModEx platform

5th June 2019

Flood risk modeller Fathom has announced the launch of its updated US flood model, Fathom-US, via multi-vendor catastrophe risk modelling platform ModEx. Fathom-US incorporates the latest datasets available in order to model flood risk across river channels of all sizes, and for both fluvial and pluvial perils. The model has also been ... Read the full article

NFIP extended by two-weeks

31st May 2019

The House of Representatives recently passed a two-week extension of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which was set to expire on May 31st, 2019. The two-week extension enables the NFIP to continue issuing flood insurance policies at the start of the Atlantic hurricane season, which officially starts on Saturday June ... Read the full article

Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, Airbus Ariel partner on flood modelling tool

28th May 2019

Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, the commercial insurance arm of the Swiss Re Group, has announced that its flood assessment tool FLOAT is to be powered by drone imagery and data from Airbus Aerial, a subsidiary of the global aerospace firm. FLOAT was designed to help companies assess the flood risks of ... Read the full article

Nat cats dent underwriting performance of Australian insurers in Q1: APRA

24th May 2019

Statistics on the performance of general insurers in Australia in the first-quarter of 2019, released by the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA), shows that claims from natural catastrophe events contributed to a 32.4% decline in the underwriting result. The Quarterly General Insurance Performance Statistics report released by the APRA, shows that ... Read the full article

The private re/insurance sector is ready to tackle rising flood losses: Swiss Re’s Noriega, Wiese

21st May 2019

Insurers and reinsurers are ready to meet growing public desire for improved flood coverage as the risk of flooding to communities continues to rise across the globe, according to Swiss Re’s Santiago Noriega and Alexa Wiese. “On average, flooding affects more people worldwide than any other type of natural catastrophe because ... Read the full article

Flood Re & Lighthill Risk Network partner with re/insurers on flood modelling report

14th May 2019

Flood Re, the UK’s government-backed reinsurance scheme, has partnered with researchers at Lighthill Risk Network, as well as a number of re/insurers and brokers, to produce a collaborative report on ways to improve flood risk understanding and management. The research project compiles input from Swiss Re, SCOR, Allianz, Aspen, Lloyds TSB, ... Read the full article

Flood Re opens online facility for MGAs to cede risk directly

14th May 2019

Flood Re, the UK’s government-backed reinsurance scheme, has opened a new online facility for managing general agents (MGAs) that will allow them to cede policies directly to Flood Re on behalf of their insurer. Previously, MGAs had to collate and send ceding data through an insurer in order to apply for ... Read the full article

Re/insurers set to pay $1 billion+ for April nat cats: Aon

13th May 2019

The latest global catastrophe recap report from insurance and reinsurance broker, Aon, reveals that insurers and reinsurers are set to pay out more than $1 billion in losses from natural disaster events that occurred in the month of April 2019. Aon's April, global catastrophe recap report highlights an extremely active month ... Read the full article

PERILS updates Townsville flood loss estimate to AUD $1.04bn

10th May 2019

Catastrophe loss data aggregator PERILS has updated its insured loss estimate to AUD $1.041 billion (USD $728.28 million) for the floods that hit the Australian city of Townsville, Queensland in February 2019. The update compares with PERILS’ initial loss estimate of AUD $957 million (USD $669 million), which was issued ... Read the full article