disaster

The global insurance and reinsurance industry will pay for an above average percentage of economic losses from natural catastrophes and man-made disasters in the first-half of 2015, according to reinsurer Swiss Re.

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.

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.

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 parametric Pacific Island catastrophe risk insurance and reinsurance pooling initiative, the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Insurance Pilot, may have been triggered by Cyclone Pam which made a direct hit on Vanuatu as a strong Category 5 storm.

Information provided by the NOAA’s historical, severe weather event database unit, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), reveals that since 1980, 178 adverse weather events in the states have incurred costs between them surpassing $1 trillion.

Throughout 2014 a total of 258 natural disasters or catastrophes struck globally, causing total insured losses of $39 billion, a significant 38% dip below the ten-year average of $63 billion, according to Aon Benfield’s Impact Forecasting unit.

2014 global insured natural catastrophe losses came in at just $31 billion, down from $39 billion a year earlier, according to reinsurance firm Munich Re. Overall economic losses were down as well at $110 billion, compared to $140 billion in 2013.

Global insured losses from natural catastrophes and man-made disaster events are estimated to reach $34 billion in 2014 by Swiss Re’s sigma research unit, below recent annual averages, while economic losses reached $113 billion.