insured losses

The trend of European and central European countries being hit by convective style severe weather, thunderstorms, rainfall and flooding continues in 2016, with Germany, France and the Czech Republic all suffering in recent days.

Meteorologists have long studied the unpredictability and devastation caused by tornado outbreaks in the U.S. in an effort to gain a greater understanding into the predictability, severity and potential location of events.

April 2016 saw the highest level of global natural catastrophe and severe weather losses for that month in five years, according to insurance and reinsurance broker Aon, with over $2 billion of insurance industry losses from the Japan earthquakes and $3 billion from a spate U.S. severe convective weather outbreaks.

PCS reported earlier this year that 2015 was the most active year for catastrophe events across the U.S. since 2007, and the firm’s first-quarter 2016 catastrophe report reveals a continuation of the trend as catastrophe frequency and severity intensified during the quarter.

Global reinsurance firm Swiss Re’s first-quarter 2016 results were impacted by weather derivative losses and further adverse development from the New Zealand earthquakes, which could signal impacts more broadly, perhaps affecting some insurance-linked securities (ILS) players.

U.S. insured losses from winter weather, convective storms and floods have reached $7.4 billion in 2016 already, according to Steve Bowen of Impact Forecasting, a total that will likely rise further with this week’s weather-warned storms and as we enter peak season for severe thunderstorm risk.

Recent P&C market commentary from Credit Suisse highlights outsized catastrophe losses for insurers from Texas hailstorms in March, suggesting that the overall industry loss, and any reinsurance or ILS impact, from these events could be higher than estimates suggest.

Another devastating hailstorm has struck Texas, the fourth major insurance and reinsurance loss in a month, with an April 12th hail storm striking the San Antonio area set to become the biggest hail insurance loss in the state’s history and push recent insured losses towards $3 billion or higher.

The past week is set to result in another economic loss of over $1 billion, due to severe convective and thunderstorm weather in the U.S., where the resulting strong winds and hail, with insurance industry losses in the hundreds of millions, according to Aon.

The Insurance Council of Texas reports that for the third time in a month severe hail storms and damaging winds have impacted cities in the state. The Insurance Council also revealed that insurance and possibly reinsurance industry losses from the previous two events could hit $1.3 billion.