losses

Zurich have listed what they see as the ‘Top Ten Mega Disasters’ of the last decade on their website.These events have been selected based on loss of life, overall impact to businesses and the geographic scope and duration of the disasters. It also makes sense that these are some of the biggest insurance loss events […]

So far, the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season has been kind to insurers and reinsurers. On each occasion that a large loss has been expected the winds have died or the storm track has changed enough to prevent that large loss happening. Despite this being one of the most active seasons the losses are not mounting […]

Guy Carpenter have published the first part of their report looking at the World Catastrophe Reinsurance Market. In it they look at the major loss events of the first half of 2010 and comment on how the market is fairing.

The recent earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand on September 4th which registered Mw7.0 on the Richter scale has been cited as the most damaging the country has seen in years. It is estimated that the quake may have damaged as many as 100,000 of the 160,000 homes in the city.

A major hailstorm which struck the Perth area of Australia on the 22nd March this year has become one of the costliest disasters ever experienced in that country. The Insurance Council of Australia has released figures which show the storm was the third most costly event on record.

There has been much discussion in recent years regarding climate change, man made global warming and their possible link to increasing disaster insurance losses. Studies have suggested in recent years that disaster losses have been increasing more rapidly and so people look for a reason for this increase and one suggestion has always been climate […]

The Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill disaster will not be a watershed event for the P&C insurance industry according to Towers Watson. It could however create a market environment where tightening of insurance prices and terms within the energy risk sector becomes a possibility. The estimated market loss is currently $4b – $6b.

Verisk Analytics is the parent company of AIR Worldwide and the Property Claims Services (PCS) brands and as such is well known in risk management and risk transfer markets. Today they’ve announced the launch of a new, high resolution catastrophe loss index which will be known as the Verisk Catastrophe Index.

The second quarter of 2010 has seen some severe weather in the U.S. midwest, one of the worst events being a hailstorm which also saw tornadoes in Oklahoma. That event alone caused losses of around $1B (coverage here). How will that affect large multi-national insurance companies? You’d expect them to have good hedging and risk […]

Recent catastrophes such as the Chile earthquake and European windstorm Xynthia are going to cause high losses amongst reinsurers around the globe. Insurers and reinsurers will be reporting large drops in their profitability for this year which comes as a complete contrast to 2009 which saw losses lower than average. This could be good news […]