drought

The German government is helping African countries to continue benefiting from parametric drought insurance protection under the African Risk Capacity (ARC), with around EUR 19 million being donated to help fund their participation during a time when fiscal budgets may be stretched by the pandemic.

Severe droughts, wildfires and flooding from torrential rain and typhoons have combined to cause in excess of $7 billion of economic losses in July 2018, with the insurance and reinsurance industry set to pay its share of the global bill.

The current near-record El Niño event appears on the wane, with conditions attributed to the phenomenon said to be in decline, but its effects set to be felt for some time to come, with insurance and reinsurance firms now turning their heads to the possible development of La Niña conditions.

Three Argentinian enterprises have joined forces to develop climate index futures to help agricultural producers to better protect themselves against the impacts of severe or inclement weather, with drought the first targeted product launch.

As the 2015/16 El Niño event intensifies there is an expectation that global economic losses from drought will surpass the previous forecasts of $8 billion, suggesting a growing toll for crop insurance, reinsurance and any ILS investors exposed to agricultural lines.

Globally the risks posed by and impacts created by droughts and heatwaves have been growing in recent years, yet drought itself remains a widely underestimated natural hazard, according to a recent report published by the worlds largest reinsurer Munich Re. According to Munich Re’s report, there have been around ten loss-producing droughts around the world […]

According to Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, global crop insurance claims in 2012 reached a massive $23 billion. Munich Re attributes as much as $15 billion of these losses in the U.S. due to the severe drought in 2012. Crop losses are growing with increasing insurance penetration and in years to come these figures […]

The development of microinsurance products using satellite data to create index-based insurance products is a growing industry and one which is showing increasing promise as the pilot projects scale out to encompass thousands of policyholders. The application of satellite technologies to create indices against which insurance products can be triggered is changing the way farmers […]

A report from rating agency Standard & Poor’s estimates that the U.S. crop insurance and reinsurance sector will see losses of over $5 billion from the severe drought which has been affecting much of the country in 2012. S&P says that however large the loss becomes they believe it will impact crop insurers earnings but […]

Just two or three weeks ago many insurance publications were suggesting that crop insurance losses resulting from the severe drought in the U.S. would not be large enough to hit the global reinsurance market. We’ve been cautious on this point, as we could see the increasing severity of the drought (the worst in more than […]