Natural disasters in 2009
SwissRe has published its latest “Sigma” study on natural and technological disasters, worldwide, in 2009.
They incurred a total of 26 billion USD (CHF 27.5 billion) of insured claims, and they caused 15,000 deaths and a total cost of 62 billion USD (CHF 65.7 billion) to society at large. For information, these figures amounted to 268 billion USD in 2008.
Natural disasters cost 22 billion USD (CHF 23.3 billion) whereas technological disasters amounted to 4 billion USD (CHF 4.2 billion).
North America witnessed the highest insured claims with more than 12.7 billion USD, primarily due to violent storms, hurricanes and tornadoes in the USA.
Asia suffered the greatest number of deaths, 9400, and 2.4 billion USD of insured claims due to typhoons (Morakot, Ketsana) as well as an earthquake which hit Indonesia. Bushfires caused damage amounting to more than one billion USD in Australia.
Six events caused insured claims amounting to more than one billion USD each. The most costly was the “Klaus” storm which hit Spain and France in January, giving rise to 2.35 billion euros (CHF 3.4 billion) of insured claims.
SwissRe observes that, historically, insured claims due to natural disasters are on an upward trend owing to increasing wealth, a strong concentration of wealth in regions that are exposed to disasters and insured as well as a trend for increasing insurance cover.
Global warming also contributed to this trend. Over the past 40 years, 360 earthquakes have caused the death of one million people. It should be pointed out that the major risks tend to occur in less developed economies, which are characterised by low incomes and are less well or not at all insured against these catastrophes. Therefore, the rebuilding costs are financed to a very limited extent by insurers.
However, these economies can benefit from insurance cover if the public and private sectors – [re]insurers, brokers, governments, international organisations, etc. – pool their strengths to implement innovative [re]insurance and capital markets solutions.
According to Thomas Hess, an economist with SwissRe, “in 2005, insured claims reached a record of 120 billion USD, a record which might be beaten in the near future”. He cites as examples, in 2010, the earthquakes of Haiti and Chile as well as the Xynthia storm which struck France recently.