tropical storm Debby 2024

The latest data reported by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) states that across hurricanes Debby, Helene and the most recent Milton, more than 72,000 National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) claims have been filed so far.

HCI Group, the Florida-focused insurance holding company, said it expects to pay between $600 million and $750 million in claims for hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton, but net retained losses from the three events could be as low as $185 million.

Catastrophe risk modelling specialist Karen Clark & Company (KCC) is the latest with an estimate of industry losses from recent hurricane Debby, saying the private market insured loss is expected to be close to $1.4 billion.

The private insurance market industry loss in the United States after recent hurricane Debby is not expected to exceed $1.5 billion, while additional losses from the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) are expected to be less than $300 million, Moody’s RMS Event Response has said.

With hurricane Debby private insurance market losses looking set to come in around the $1 billion or below level, ILS investment manager Twelve Capital has said that no direct impacts to catastrophe bonds would be expected, but continued aggregate erosion to certain cat bonds is more likely.

According to broker Gallagher Re, hurricane Debby is expected to be a very manageable event for the insurance and reinsurance industry, with water driving a relatively significant proportion of a private and public market insured loss of up to $2 billion.

Insured losses from hurricane Debby are expected to largely fall within primary insurers’ reinsurance retentions, according to James Eck of Moody’s Ratings.

As hurricane Debby slowly moves inland over the Florida Panhandle and into Georgia and beyond, specialist catastrophe bond fund manager Plenum Investments has said it does not expect insured losses from the storm will negatively affect its cat bond funds.

As hurricane Debby approaches landfall, given the relatively sparsely populated landfall region the insurance and reinsurance industry exposure will be more limited, which has led investment manager Icosa Investments AG to say it does not expect any substantial impacts to catastrophe bonds from the storm.

Tropical storm Debby, the fourth named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, has now become a hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico, with the NHC warning that additional strengthening is expected as hurricane Debby heads for landfall in the Big Bend area of the Florida Panhandle.