Natural disasterHurricanes make 2017 year of highest insured losses ever
The hurricane trio of Harvey, Irma, and Maria will cost the insurance industry a record amount in 2017: the final insurance bill for those and other natural catastrophes, including a severe earthquake in Mexico, is expected to come to $135 billion – higher than ever before. And overall losses – that is, including uninsured losses – amounted to $330 billion, the second-highest figure ever recorded for natural disasters. The only costlier year so far was 2011, when the Tohoku earthquake in Japan contributed to overall losses of $354 billion in today’s dollars.
The hurricane trio of Harvey, Irma, and Maria will cost the insurance industry a record amount in 2017: the final insurance bill for those and other natural catastrophes, including a severe earthquake in Mexico, is expected to come to $135 billion – higher than ever before. And overall losses – that is, including uninsured losses – amounted to $330 billion, the second-highest figure ever recorded for natural disasters. The only costlier year so far was 2011, when the Tohoku earthquake in Japan contributed to overall losses of $354 billion in today’s dollars.
Torsten Jeworrek, Munich Re Board member responsible for global reinsurance business, said: “This year’s extreme natural catastrophes show how important insurance is in absorbing financial losses in the wake of such disasters. Munich Re is willing to develop this business further – we have the necessary capacity and expertise. For me, a key point is that some of the catastrophic events, such as the series of three extremely damaging hurricanes, or the very severe flooding in South Asia after extraordinarily heavy monsoon rains, are giving us a foretaste of what is to come. Because even though individual events cannot be directly traced to climate change, our experts expect such extreme weather to occur more often in future.”
The year’s loss figures in detail
Munich Re says that the overall loss figure of $330 billion, for all types of natural disaster, was almost double the ten-year, inflation-adjusted average of $170 billion. Losses from weather-related natural catastrophes set a new record. Insured losses were almost three times higher than the average of $49 billion. Our statistics identified a total of 710 relevant natural catastrophes, which was also significantly more than the average of 605. Approximately 10,000 people lost their lives in natural disasters this year, which is a slightly higher figure to last year’s, but at least much lower than the ten-year average of 60,000 (read more).
