catastrophe

Insured losses from severe convective weather, including tornadoes, severe thunderstorms and hail, in the United States continue to rise in 2014, with the total now estimated to have reached an insurance industry loss of $5.5 billion by Impact Forecasting.

The insured losses from severe weather in the United States continue to rise, with thunderstorms, tornadoes and hail in May expected to cause an insurance industry loss of over $1 billion, the second month in a row that insured losses have reached that level.

The insurance and reinsurance industry is coping with the increasing number and frequency of extreme weather events and has processes in place to monitor the impact of climate change on weather losses, says rating agency Standard & Poor’s.

The insurance industry faces a rising bill for damage from severe weather which occurred in April, according to the latest report from Impact Forecasting. Thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail and floods in April are set to cause in excess of $1 billion insured losses.

Sri Lanka has become the first South Asian country to sign up for an innovative disaster risk financing facility with the World Bank, gaining access to a $102m Development Policy Loan with a Catastrophe Deferred Drawdown Option (DPL with a CAT DDO).

A new report from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) highlights that Asia is lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to developing insurance, reinsurance and capital market solutions which enable workable disaster risk transfer markets.

The first-quarter of 2014 saw the frequency of catastrophe events and resulting insurance industry losses both slightly below average, according to Property Claim Services (PCS) Q1 2014 catastrophe report.

The German finance ministry has given the countries banks a green light to pursue the issuance of contingent convertible bonds, or CoCo’s, and other contingent capital deals as it clarified the instruments tax treatment.

A new venture named Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ) has launched targeting the provision of Canadian catastrophe loss data, indices and analysis to the insurance and reinsurance industries.

According to Impact Forecasting, the catastrophe modelling development center of reinsurance broker Aon Benfield, insurers will be on the hook for an estimated $7 billion of losses from catastrophes and weather disasters in Q1 2014.