quake

The Insurance Council of New Zealand said that private insurance and reinsurance firms have now paid out more than $18 billion to settle commercial and residential claims from the Canterbury earthquakes, but ever since the quakes the magnitude of the loss has been filled with uncertainty.

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.

Australian insurance group IAG has reported its results, revealing continued deterioration of its Canterbury, New Zealand earthquake claims, challenging commercial market conditions and new reinsurance arrangements with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

The 2011 Canterbury, New Zealand earthquakes continue to demonstrate how complicated an event major earthquakes can be, in terms of calculating losses, as Insurance Australia Group (IAG) revealed further impacts to its bottom-line from claims deterioration.

In a reminder that catastrophe claims are not always settled rapidly and that it can take some years before the final insurance industry loss and impact to reinsurance markets is clear, IAG has revealed another deterioration in its loss due to the 2011 Canterbury, New Zealand earthquakes.

There has been some discussion of the potential for catastrophe bonds in China for transferring earthquake risks to the capital markets ever since the 6th Annual European Insurance-Linked Securities Conference, held by rating agency Standard & Poor’s in London last week. We attended the event but have only now had time to write down our […]

The risk of Japan suffering another major earthquake has increased since the M9.0 Tohoku quake of March 2011 according to research from risk modeller AIR Worldwide. In a report published yesterday AIR discuss the way the energy released by the massive quake last year has put stress on other areas of fault lines throughout the […]

The eastern Van region of Turkey has been hit by another damaging earthquake less than a month after a M7.2 quake struck the area. The second quake struck late yesterday in the Edremit district, 16km (10 miles) south of Van, the US Geological Survey said. An M5.6 quake, so much weaker than the one in […]

Six months after we wrote about the start of discussions in Canada on whether catastrophe bonds would be suitable for transferring the risks of earthquakes in the country, the Canadian Underwriter reports that progress on the initiative is about to be made as the Insurance Bureau of Canada has announced their interest and involvement.

Risk modeller EQECAT has published an estimate of the insured losses resulting from the recent M7.2 earthquake in Turkey. EQECAT put the range of insured losses at between $100m and $200m and the total economic loss estimate in the low single-digit billions USD. EQECAT are also the modelling agent on the Ianus Capital catastrophe bond […]