Hurricane Ian catastrophe claims cost nears $12.6bn: FLOIR

The latest estimate for hurricane Ian insured losses based on claims data submitted by primary insurers in Florida now stands at almost $12.6 billion, according to regulator The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (OIR).

This latest estimate for hurricane Ian claims costs reported by insurers is as of December 21st and at nearly $12.6 billion the figure represents a roughly 22% increase on the $10.3 billion reported a month earlier.

As of December 21st, primary insurers operating in the state of Florida had reported 669,639 claims filed after hurricane Ian, up on the 640,496 claims filed a month prior.

While claims are still coming in, the insurance and reinsurance industry continue to make good progress, with 69.2% of the claims filed already closed, a significant uplift on the 52.5% that were closed at the last report in November.

310,233 hurricane Ian claims have been closed with an insurance payment made or due, while 153,309 are closed without payment.

The number of hurricane Ian claims still open as of December 21st has dropped to 206,097, down from 304,000  a month earlier, reflecting the progress now being made.

The estimate of almost $12.6 billion reported by the Florida OIR is still far beneath any of the industry loss estimates for hurricane Ian, as it is based on unaudited aggregate information collected from claims data filed with the regulator by insurers.

Back on October 24th, one month ago, the FLOIR had updated its estimate for hurricane Ian’s insured losses, based on claims filed at the time, to just over $7.13 billion.

That was lifted to $8.7 billion around the start of November, then $9.6 billion as of mid-November, then to the $10.3 billion as of November 24th.

Commercial property, commercial residential, private flood and business interruption claims continue to be the slowest to get settled, with in some cases less than 40% of claims dealt with so far, suggesting the total has much further to run.

As claims get closed and settled, with or without payment, the claims remaining tend to be some of the more challenging, slower to close and also costly, so the claims tally from the FLOIR is likely to escalate over the coming months.

The Florida OIR has also updated its reported claims data for the more recent hurricane Nicole.

A month ago the hurricane Nicole data stood at 14,389 claims filed in number, 19.3% of which were already closed, and with a claims cost reported at the time of $132.4 million.

As of December 9th, the number of claims filed for hurricane Nicole had reached 45,512, with 68.7% closed, and a far higher claims cost reported of almost $405.4 million.