Natural Disasters Cost Insurers 50 Percent More In 2008

BERLIN — Insurers' losses from natural disasters rose by about 50 percent in 2008, with Caribbean hurricanes Ike and Gustav powering the increase and climate change increasingly a factor, a leading reinsurer said Monday.

Munich Re AG said in an annual review that insured losses came in at $45 billion this year, up from nearly $30 billion in 2007. It said total economic losses, including losses not covered by insurance, leapt to some $200 billion from last year's $82 billion.

That increase was due in part to the devastating earthquake which hit China's Sichuan province in May. Munich Re said the quake caused overall losses of $85 billion _ by far the year's biggest _ but insured losses of only $300 million.

Munich Re said the year was marked by high losses from weather-related natural disasters, continuing a long-term trend.

"Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes," board member Torsten Jeworrek said in a statement.

"These, in turn, generate greater and greater losses because the concentration of values in exposed areas, like regions on the coast, is also increasing further throughout the world."

The company noted that six named storms _ Dolly, Edouard, Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike _ reached the U.S. coast this year after two years in which the American mainland was largely spared.

The year's most expensive event for insurers was Hurricane Ike, which hit the Caribbean and the southern United States in September, causing insured losses of $15 billion. In second place was Gustav, which hit shortly before and caused losses of $5 billion.

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In both cases, the overall losses were about twice the insured losses.

Munich Re said an unusually severe snow- and ice-laden cold spell in China in January and February, which badly hit roads, railways and electricity supplies, cost insurers $1.6 billion _ well short of the overall economic losses, which it estimated at $21.1 billion.

A winter storm that hit central Europe in early March cost insurers some $1.5 billion.

Munich Re said an unusually severe U.S. tornado season, with a total of 1,700 tornadoes, also proved costly. A series of tornadoes that killed 12 people in late May generated insured losses of more than $1.3 billion.

The year's deadliest disaster was Cyclone Nargis, which devastated coastal areas in Myanmar in early May, killing nearly 85,000 people. Munich Re put overall economic losses at $4 billion, but gave no figure for insured losses in the isolated country.

While they rose sharply for the second consecutive year, this year's insured losses were still well short of the $99 billion Munich Re recorded in 2005 _ when losses were swollen by claims from Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

The company said that year also saw a record overall economic loss of some $232 billion, adjusted for inflation.

Munich Re, a reinsurer, offers backup policies to companies writing primary insurance policies. Reinsurance helps spread risk so that the system can handle large losses from natural disasters.

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On the Net:

http://www.munichre.com

Comments

[TimmySlagle]

There is no direct link between Climate Change and Hurricane frequency or Intensity.

In fact, a recent study indicated that Global Warming would cause a decrease in tropical storms.

[BSERIUS]

NOBODY IS DISPUTING THAT THE CLIMATE CHANGES AND HAS CHANGED OVER MILLIONS OF YEARS...It is the goofiness of the Globalphobes who think it is man made.....Climate change does not cause earthquakes or volcanoes.,,,Think abut it , if the Torg and Swen can get the courts to agree with the sci fi of climate change causing natural disasters , then they can rewrite their policies in a way to relieve them of liabilities and payouts

[texasrodeoqueen]

climate change does not cause earthquakes or volcanoes- but if you read the article above BSERIUS, before you began ranting reich wing stuff, or know anything about global warming, it's about weather related natural disasters-­tornadoes, hurricanes, cyclones, drought/heat , flood, ice storms, etc. I don't think that after these things have been wrecking havoc in our own country that a sane, rational, unbrainwashed person can deny the fossil fuel crisis.

[wadenelson1]

>Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes....

but, but, but......

Let's see how the trolls try and spin THIS!

[jake106]

There is nothing to spin. The statement "very probably contributing" doesn't actually mean anything at all. The article doesn't say "Scientific evidence has shown that the increasing temperature caused weather extremes by blah blah blah". It merely states that it probably did. No proof. No evidence. No case.

Incidentally, one very obvious reason that extreme weather is causing more, and more costly, damage is because our population has grown, the costs of pretty much ALL buildings has risen, and we have rather foolishly refused to implement ALL the new technology that exists that would make our civilization more disaster "proof". Those reasons have nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with man's short-sightedness.

Texasrodeoqueen- all these natural disasters have ALWAYS been happening in our nation. We've always had hurricanes, tornadoes, mud-slides, droughts, floods...the whole nine yards. It isn't as if twenty years ago the world was an idyllic place where nothing bad ever happened.