US insured catastrophe losses in 2025 12% above 10-year avg at $100bn: Gallagher Re

While headline global insured catastrophe loss estimates are all pointing to a tally below averages, reinsurance broker Gallagher Re has highlighted that for the United States the $100 billion of insured losses experienced in 2025 was around 12% above the 10-year average.

Gallagher Re has estimated insured losses from natural catastrophes and severe weather events delivered a $129 billion annual bill to the insurance and reinsurance industry in 2025.

For comparison, yesterday Aon estimated the figure at $127 billion, while previously Munich Re estimated losses to be approximately $108 billion earlier this month, while Swiss Re pegged the losses at about $107 billion back in mid-December.

As ever, differences come by what events are included as well as how insured losses are calculated by each reporter.

In the case of Gallagher Re, the reinsurance broker notes that the estimated US $129 billion of global insured natural catastrophe losses in 2025 were around 5% below the decadal average.

But the total was significant enough to have now raised the 5-year annual average loss to US $155 billion, saying that “changes in hazard, societal, and economic behavior combine to drive more expensive disasters.”

Steve Bowen, Chief Science Officer, Gallagher Re commented, “With each passing year we continue to witness more extremes and unusual occurrences of natural catastrophes around the world. This rise is seen in areas long considered to be ‘lower risk’, in addition to parts of the globe already known to be more vulnerable. While the (re)insurance industry remains able to absorb these growing losses, we are confronted with a new reality.

“The complexity of these events is accelerating the need to better understand how both physical and non-physical risk profiles are evolving and becoming increasingly interconnected. Our industry must accept, develop, and utilize new analytics and technologies (such as AI) to better forecast and communicate risk.”

Estimated direct economic costs from these disaster events reached US $296 billion in 2025 (around 25% below the 10-year average), meaning the protection gap stood at 56% with some US $167 billion of loss costs not covered by insurance last year.

Notably, Gallagher Re recorded a minimum of 23 billion-dollar insured catastrophe loss events in 2025, 16 in the United States.

While there were 7 insured catastrophe loss events whose costs stretched into the multi-billion dollar range in that country.

Severe convective storms in the United States drove 13 of those billion dollar loss events, while that peril drove at least 47% of the global loss total at $60 billion in SCS insured losses around the world.

Insured catastrophe losses in the US reached $100 billion, with the California wildfires a significant contributor to that total.

Notably, that is 12% over the 10-year average for United States insured catastrophe losses, while the rest of the world came in notably below average in most regions.

Another interesting data point is the fact that, out of the $129 billion of global insured catastrophe losses some $125 billion came from weather and climate events.

Which means that other catastrophes, such as earthquakes, were a minimal contributor. Showing that, alongside the absence of US hurricane landfalls, a year with a large quake would be another factor that could drive the annual loss burden well over the averages it seems.

While the Los Angeles wildfires boosted the US catastrophe and weather loss burden, for those managing and deploying catastrophe reinsurance capital at this time in a softening market it is worth remembering that 2025 could have been a significantly more costly year, had there been a more typical level of named storm impact to the United States, or more in the way of losses from non-weather related natural disaster events in high-value areas.