Jebi officially the largest Japan typhoon insured loss ever

Typhoon Jebi has now officially become the largest Japan typhoon related insurance and reinsurance market loss on record, as the amount of insured claims paid for the storm have now reached almost $5.2 billion.

The latest data from the General Insurance Association of Japan (GIAJ) shows that typhoon Jebi has now resulted in a massive 825,091 accepted insurance claims, 108,928 from automobiles, 694,310 from property fire insurance policies and 21,853 from other miscellaneous lines of business.

The resulting claims paid total has reached more than 585.1 billion Japanese Yen, equivalent to roughly US $5.2 billion, with around $475 million driven by auto losses, almost $4.7 billion from property damage claims and just over $90 million from other lines.

The new claims paid total of almost $5.2 billion puts typhoon Jebi above the previous record loss from a typhoon in Japan, which was typhoon Mireille in 1991, which drove just over $5 billion of losses.

The data from the GIAJ only includes that collected from domestic Japanese insurers, so does not include foreign insurers or reinsurance firms.

The industry is expecting that typhoon Jebi’s industry loss will actually settle somewhere around $8 billion, so it’s clear that this has been a very impactful event and it did drive some ILS fund losses in recent weeks.

In addition, the latest data related to typhoon Trami is also available and the GIAJ said that based on 379,697 accepted claims, the total amount of claims paid now sits at almost 187.4 billion Japanese Yen, equivalent to almost US $1.7 billion.

Typhoon Trami loss estimates typically range from $2 billion to as much as $4 billion, we understand.

So between just these two Japanese typhoons that struck the country in recent months the industry has paid almost US $7 billion of claims, while the total global re/insurance industry loss from the two events looks destined to settle above $10 billion.

Typhoon Trami also had an impact on some ILS funds and private ILS positions, coming soon after Jebi and pushing some insurers to strengthen their calls on reinsurance program support.

Japanese insurers had been buying more aggregate reinsurance protection in recent years and given the catastrophe activity experienced in 2018 it’s understood a number of these arrangements have faced losses.