Reinsurance News
Losses
News on catastrophe and man-made losses that impact or could impact the reinsurance industry and reinsurers around the globe.
PERILS puts insured property loss for Feb UK floods at £375m
1st September 2020
Zurich-based insurance data company, PERILS, has released an updated industry loss footprint for the floods in the United Kingdom in February 2020. The floods mainly affected Wales, the Midlands and Yorkshire from 9 to 29 February 2020. In total, an estimated 4,800 properties were flooded, although many more buildings were successfully ... Read the full article
Hurricane Laura onshore insured property loss close to $9bn: KCC
31st August 2020
Onshore property insurance market losses in the United States and Caribbean will be close to $9 billion, according to an estimate from Karen Clark & Company (KCC). Karen Clark & Company's industry loss estimate includes $8.7 billion of insured losses in the U.S., driven by hurricane Laura's wind and storm surge ... Read the full article
Hurricane Laura onshore insured losses estimated up to $8bn by AIR
31st August 2020
Catastrophe risk modelling specialist AIR Worldwide has estimated that onshore insured property losses from recent hurricane Laura will fall between $4 billion and $8 billion. The estimate, which is the first of the official post-landfall figures from a catastrophe risk modeller, is based only on industry insured losses to onshore property ... Read the full article
Hurricane Laura insured wind & surge losses seen at up to $12bn: CoreLogic
28th August 2020
Catastrophe risk modeller, CoreLogic, has released an estimate range of between $8 billion and $12 billion for insured wind and storm surge losses for residential and commercial properties in Louisiana and Texas, as a result of the devastating impacts of Hurricane Laura. The fourth hurricane and first major hurricane of ... Read the full article
Australia’s natural disaster payouts reach $3.85bn: ICA
27th August 2020
According to data from the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), re/insurers have already paid out AU $3.85 billion (US $2.79 billion) to customers affected by last summer’s bushfires, floods and hailstorms. ICA CEO Rob Whelan said the industry was well ahead of its normal natural disaster response, with more than 83% ... Read the full article
Hurricane Laura makes Cat 4 landfall; NHC warns of “unsurvivable” storm surge
27th August 2020
Just before 1am local time, Hurricane Laura made landfall near Cameron, Louisiana, as an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm, packing sustained winds of 150 mph with the potential to impact more than 1 million homes. Hurricane Laura continued to strengthen throughout yesterday, almost reaching Category 5 hurricane status before making landfall ... Read the full article
Hurricane Laura continues to strengthen, storm surge threat significant
26th August 2020
Hurricane Laura has intensified further securing major Category 3 hurricane status, raising concerns for the offshore energy market as the storm continues to head for the Gulf Coast, with forecasters warning of a major landfall. As at 16:00 BST, Wed 26th August, data from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) shows that ... Read the full article
World economic resilience to fall in 2020; protection gap hits $1.24tn: Swiss Re
26th August 2020
The impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is expected to drive an almost 20% reduction in global macroeconomic resilience in 2020, while the global protection gap (disparity between economic and insured losses) has hit a new high of $1.24 trillion, according to Swiss Re Institute. In its latest annual resilience indices, ... Read the full article
KBW forecasts growing reinsurance losses & stronger rate increases
24th August 2020
Analysts at KBW are forecasting growing reinsurance losses in 2020 and stronger reinsurance rate increases next year, based on loss activity over the year so far. Reinsurers Munich Re and Swiss Re have already estimated that insured catastrophe losses will total $27 billion and $31 billion over the first ... Read the full article
COVID-19 looking more like an earnings event than a capital event: David Flandro
24th August 2020
Speaking during a recent second quarter earnings update, Hyperion X's David Flandro outlined a belief that COVID-19 is looking more like an earnings event than a capital event, despite the sizeable difficulties remaining for the re/insurance sector as a result of the pandemic. Flandro, noting how reinsurers have taken a larger ... Read the full article
Allstate’s July catastrophe results produce income on $450m PG&E recovery
20th August 2020
U.S. primary insurer, The Allstate Corporation, has revealed that catastrophe results for the month of July generated pre-tax income of $334 million ($264mn after-tax), as previously announced PG&E subrogation recoveries more than offset the impacts of catastrophe events in the period. After investigations in 2019 found that PG&E's equipment was responsible ... Read the full article
Katrina’s economic impact would be $40bn higher today: Swiss Re
18th August 2020
A new report from Swiss Re Institute has estimated that economic costs could be as high as $200 billion if Hurricane Katrina were to hit New Orleans in 2020, which is more than $40 billion higher than the 2005 total. Adjusted for inflation, economic losses from Katrina come to approximately $160 ... Read the full article
Public COVID-19 losses among re/insurers up 23% to $24.8bn
18th August 2020
Publicly recorded COVID-19-related losses among the largest global insurance and reinsurance companies have increased by almost 23% to $24.8 billion, according to data compiled by Zurich-based financial services advisory, PeriStrat LLC. We wrote on July 27th that publicly reported losses from the coronavirus pandemic among the largest re/insurers had reached ... Read the full article
Beirut port explosion claims hit $425mn
17th August 2020
Insurance claims resulting from the Beirut port explosion on August 4, believed to have been caused by 2,750 metric tons of unsafely stored ammonium nitrate, has officially reached $425 million. Following a meeting between Lebanon's President Michel Aoun, Minister of Economy Raoul Nehme and an extensive delegation from the insurance sector, ... Read the full article
PERILS raises storm Victoria (Dennis) industry loss to €344mn
17th August 2020
Catastrophe loss data aggregator, PERILS AG, has updated its insured property market loss estimate for extratropical cyclone Victoria (Dennis) by more than 20% to €344 million. The storm impacted the British Isles and north-western Europe from 15th to 17th February, 2020 and occurred just six days after extratropical cyclone Sabine. PERILS ... Read the full article