insurance

The global reinsurance market is at an inflection point after consecutive strong year’s of underwriting returns have driven robust capital generation, while inflows continue to grow the insurance-linked securities market and alternative forms of capacity, which leads AM Best to call this an inflection point and ask if pricing discipline will last.

Tropical Storm Risk (TSR) has now lowered its forecast for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season at an update today, citing “conditions in the sub-tropical Atlantic looking less favourable than as appeared to be a month ago.”

AM Best and reinsurance broker Gallagher Re have suggested that the areas in and around Spokane, Washington will suffer considerable insured losses from the ongoing wildfires, with Gallagher Re indicating that it has the potential to be a billion-dollar insured loss event, and could become the costliest insured wildfire event in Washington’s history.

The Colorado State University (CSU) tropical meteorology team has stuck with its forecast of well-below normal activity levels for the 2026 Atlantic hurricane season, while its landfall probability metrics have declined somewhat as the season progresses.

CatIQ, Canada’s insured loss and exposure indices provider, has published a final insurance industry loss estimate of CAD $3.34 billion for the severe hailstorm that struck Calgary, Alberta Canada on August 5th, 2024.

The catastrophe bond market continues to demonstrate increased comfort with the wildfire peril in 2026, with the amount of risk capital deployed to support cat bonds that have some exposure to wildfire having soared to $5.183 billion year-to-date, already nearing the full-year record of $5.55 billion for the peril seen in 2025.

Last week’s magnitude 6.8 earthquake that struck near Kumamoto City on Japan’s Kyushu Island on July 28th is estimated likely to cause insurance industry losses of between US $1.4 billion to US $2.1 billion by data and analytics specialist Verisk.

As data center exposure continues to grow, it is placing significant pressure on the insurance industry to address these challenges. In light of this, Jason Bolding from Gallagher Securities has emphasised that the growth will require a blend of traditional insurance, reinsurance, captives, catastrophe bonds, and sidecars to effectively fill the widening protection gap.

Industry losses from the recent magnitude 6.8 earthquake that struck Kumamoto Prefecture are expected to be relatively lower than the devastating 2016 Kumamoto quakes, which caused US $53 billion in economic and $7.7 billion in insured losses, according to broking group Aon.

A substantial severe weather outbreak in the Midwest of the United States this week is seen as having the potential to result in a top-10 severe weather insurance industry loss event, which would imply the cost could be around $5 billion or higher to the market, according to broker Aon.