hail

Insurance industry losses from the severe hail and thunderstorm event that struck Brisbane, Queensland in Australia are expected to continue to rise, moving well past the point where local insurance companies will call on reinsurance support.

A new piece of insurance industry research, announced today by Verisk Climate a division of Verisk Analytics, seeks to explain the changing frequency of severe thunderstorm weather events in the U.S.

One of the world’s leading risk and reinsurance broking specialists, Guy Carpenter & Company LLC (GC), has launched a new pioneering probabilistic hail risk model for Europe, the G-CAT Hail Model.

Verisk Insurance Solutions – Underwriting, the property casualty underwriting data unit of Verisk Analytics, has released a detailed analysis report looking at the impact and severity of hailstorms events across the U.S. over the past 14 years.

Catastrophe risk modelling firm AIR Worldwide has released an updated version of its Severe Thunderstorm Model for the U.S., along with the industry’s first fully probabilistic Crop Hail Model, also for the United States.

The world’s largest reinsurer Munich Re has provided the highest insurance industry loss estimate for European severe hail and wind storm Ela, which struck Germany, France and Belgium on 9th June, in an update on 2014 insured natural catastrophe losses.

Wind and hail storm Ela, which struck Europe on June 9th and 10th affecting large areas of France, Germany and neighbouring countries, now looks to have caused at least $2 billion of insurance industry losses.

Wind and hail storm Ela which caused approximately $900m of insured losses when it struck Germany on 9th – 10th June, is second most damaging summer storm seen in fifteen years according to the country’s insurance association.

Insurance industry losses from hail storms and extreme hail events are rising, with recent storms showing that hail should no longer be considered just an attritional loss causing peril, according to risk modeller RMS.

Willis Re, the reinsurance intermediary arm of global insurance broker Willis Group, has put an estimate of $4.74 billion (€3.5 billion) on the insured loss toll from a number of severe hail storms which struck Europe between 17th June and the 6th August.