flood insurance

Research performed by global reinsurance broker and risk capital advisory TigerRisk Partners finds that the phenomena of hurricane stalling over land has not become more frequent, but the dollar value of damages caused are rising as exposures increase.

Catastrophe risk modelling specialist RMS has launched a high definition inland flood risk model for the United States, which it hopes will help insurance and reinsurance firms to establish and expand flood risk underwriting businesses.

Hiscox Re and ILS, the reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) arm of the global re/insurer, has launched FloodXtra, a new U.S. primary flood product, which is designed to help address the flood insurance gap and will enable its ILS investors to access sources of flood risk.

Property Claim Services (PCS), a division of Verisk Analytics, is to publish aggregate flood loss data supplied by the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), starting with hurricane Harvey, in a push to provide a more comprehensive view of national catastrophe losses.

Estimates of losses to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) from hurricanes Harvey and Irma’s flooding are on the rise, leaving the NFIP’s administrators with the difficult task of refunding the Program which is technically bankrupt and all but guaranteeing that the $1.024 billion reinsurance layer will payout.

An analyst at Moody’s Analytics has estimated the total economic loss due to hurricane Harvey at up to $75 billion. The massive price tag would see the storm on a par with superstorm Sandy in terms of economic impact to the United States.

The insurance-linked securities (ILS) market and providers of capital market backed reinsurance capacity can help with the job of narrowing the flood risk protection gap in the wake of hurricane Harvey, according to Rick Miller Managing Director – Co-Head of Insurance Linked Securities at Jardine Lloyd Thompson Capital Markets.

As early estimates of damages from hurricane Harvey point towards an overall economic impact in the low tens of billions of dollars with flooding likely to have caused the majority, the National Flood Insurance Program’s (NFIP) reinsurance layer looks increasingly at risk of paying out.

A bipartisan draft proposing a raft of changes and amendments to legislation surrounding the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) calls on House members to enable the flood insurance pool to cede more of its risk to the capital markets, using a full-range of reinsurance risk transfer tools.

A newly proposed draft piece of legislation which calls for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) to be reauthorised for a 10 year period also clarifies the authority of the administrator FEMA to issue flood catastrophe bonds.