catastrophe

A wave of natural catastrophe events in Australia has caused analysts to warn of negative impacts to non-life insurers’ upcoming fiscal year-end earnings, although considerable reinsurance programmes will diminish the total impact, according to A.M. Best.

Asian governments continue to make efforts to promote and encourage the launch of new natural disaster and weather or climate insurance and reinsurance schemes, while trying to increase uptake of existing ones.

Insurance industry losses from catastrophes in the U.S. hit $2.2 billion during the first-quarter of 2015 from eight events, slightly below the ten-year average of $2.5 billion and just above the ten-year average of 6.7 events, according to Property Claim Services (PCS).

The World Bank supported Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Pilot has paid Vanuatu $1.9m after the risk pooling facility was triggered by Category 5 Cyclone Pam which struck the Pacific island nation on March 13th.

2014 saw the highest number of natural catastrophe events that global reinsurance firm Swiss Re’s sigma unit has ever recorded, but despite the increasing frequency of loss events, the impact to insurance and reinsurance markets was below average.

The World Bank has significantly expanded the range of disaster risk transfer, management and financing options it offers to clients, adding coverage for risks outside of pure natural catastrophe events and also insurance or reinsurance options.

As the world met in Sendai, Japan last week to discuss increasing global economic resilience against natural disasters, a new set of Economic Exposure Datasets (EEDs) was released by RMS, providing a more detailed view of potential global risks.

The fight to reduce global economic losses from natural disasters “is next to impossible” as rising wealth, population and urbanisation levels drive the upward trend, according to leaders from AIR Worldwide and the UNISDR.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) aims to implement the ASEAN Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance Programme, as access to risk capital and immediate liquidity post-disaster is recognised as increasingly important to the region’s growth.

A substantial number of the 100 most vulnerable cities in the world to the perils of natural disasters are situated in the Philippines, China, Japan and Bangladesh, according to recent findings from Verisk Maplecroft, a Verisk Analytics division.