flooding

Lloyd’s, the London based specialist insurance underwriting market, has announced estimated figures for the insurance markets losses from some of the recent major disasters such as the earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand and the flooding in Queensland, Australia. The total estimated insured loss that members of the Lloyd’s market will be liable for currently […]

Insured losses from the flooding in Queensland, Australia have resulted in US$3.9 billion in claims so far according to the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA). The organisation revealed figures today showing that the insurance industry had assessed over 118,000 claims valued at AU$3.6 billion (US$3.9 billion).

The future of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) has been in the balance for some time. There have been repeated calls from reinsurance industry figures and also some politicians to end the public subsidised  NFIP and to allow the private reinsurance and risk transfer markets to step in.

It seems that microinsurance, at least in some areas of the world, is now prevalent enough and that after a disaster strikes insurers are seeing large increases in applications for microinsurance policies to protect locals from any future events. This suggests that the marketing efforts which have been ongoing in this sector are beginning to […]

Insured losses from Cyclone Yasi could rise to as much as $1.5 billion according to AIR Worldwide’s initial estimate. Cyclone Yasi struck Queensland, Australia on Wednesday 2nd Feb bringing 300km/h winds and storm surge along the coastline. This loss on top of the expected losses from the flooding suffered in Queensland at the end of […]

We wrote last week that the insured loss estimates for the recent Queensland, Australia floods, combined with the flooding in December in Australia were now being touted as around $6 billion. Now, Business Insurance reports that a Barclays Capital analyst has suggested they could top $6 billion (particularly likely now the flooding has moved south) […]

Damage and insured loss estimates for the flooding in Queensland, Australia are varying wildly as people attempt to quantify the enormity of the disaster that has struck. Our article yesterday which discussed S&P’s bulletin that said losses to insurers would exceed A$1 billion looks like a major underestimate as more recent announcements have raised loss […]

Standard & Poor’s have issued a bulletin saying that losses from the flooding being experienced in Queensland, Australia could end up costing the re/insurance industry over A$1 billion. Despite the potential high losses S&P says that ratings on Australia’s major general insurers remain unaffected so far.

Guy Carpenter have published a report looking at the devastating floods which have affected China this year. It was one of the worst flooding seasons since 1998 for China yet despite huge economic losses, insured losses will be low due to the extremely low penetration of insurance in China.

Lately there has been a call from some industry figures to end the U.S. subsidised, public National Flood Insurance Programme and to privatise flood insurance to allow private reinsurers and the capital markets to provide risk transfer solutions instead.