tropical storm Ian 2022

While the insurance, reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) industry works to understand its exposure to hurricane Ian’s major landfall event in Florida, the storm has now crossed that state, emerged back into the Atlantic and is forecast to make a second hurricane force landfall in South Carolina tomorrow.

The economic loss from major hurricane Ian’s impacts in Florida has been initially estimated at around $65 billion by global GIS and geospatial technology company RMSI.

Some further insight on the potential quantum of industry loss faced by the insurance, reinsurance and ILS market from major hurricane Ian, as KBW analyst Meyer Shields said he believes the relatively rapid weakening of the storm after landfall could mean losses settle closer to the bottom of a $32.5 billion to $40 billion range.

According to sources of and data seen by Artemis, last night catastrophe risk modelling specialists had been hinting at major hurricane Ian having the potential to deliver a global insurance, reinsurance and ILS market loss of more than $50 billion, in updates sent to their clients.

In the wake of hurricane Ian, it’s going to be particularly challenging to have an accurate view of catastrophe bond market impacts in the short-term, which we’re being told could result in a particularly far-reaching mark-down of cat bond names on brokers’ secondary pricing sheets this Friday.

While too early for accurate loss estimates, analysts at KBW have said that they expect hurricane Ian’s catastrophic impacts will provide further fuel under property catastrophe reinsurance rate momentum, while also further disrupting the Florida insurance marketplace.

Major hurricane Ian is expected to cause some impacts to catastrophe bonds, with some losses possible to that segment of the insurance-linked securities (ILS) market, according to our sources, while specialist investment manger Plenum Investments said the impact to its funds would be negative but “limited”.

Major hurricane Ian has caused catastrophic damage across the landfall region on Florida’s west coast, with a storm surge that has flooded coastal areas, wind damage from hurricane force gusts and flooding caused by torrential rains.

Major hurricane Ian is likely to deliver an insurance industry loss of greater than $20 billion, according to BMS Senior Meteorologist Andrew Siffert.

Major hurricane Ian puts a significant chunk of the global catastrophe bond market at-risk of potential losses, given there are in excess of $5 billion of US named storm specific, or well documented multi-peril cat bonds from nationwide sponsors, with Florida as a named covered state.