2015 saw lowest natural disaster losses in 6 years
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LAST year saw the lowest financial costs from natural disasters worldwide since 2009 as the El Nino weather phenomenon cut hurricane activity in the North Atlantic, a leading insurer said yesterday.
The year’s most devastating disaster was the earthquake in Nepal in April, but only a fraction of the resulting losses was insured.
Insurer Munich Re said in an annual survey that both insured losses and overall costs resulting from disasters were the lowest since 2009. It said that there were some US$27 billion in insured losses, while overall costs — including losses not covered by insurance — totaled US$90 billion. Those figures were down from US$31 billion and US$110 billion respectively in 2014.
The costliest single event for the insurance industry was a series of winter storms that hit the northeastern US and Canada in February. They generated insured losses of US$2.1 billion and total losses of US$2.8 billion.
In contrast, the earthquake in Nepal caused total damage valued at US$4.8 billion, but only US$210 million of that was insured. That underlined the fact that, in developing countries, the level of insurance coverage remains very low.
In other years, hurricanes hitting North America have caused significant costs to the insurance industry.
But “in terms of financial losses, we were somewhat fortunate in 2015: strong tropical cyclones frequently only hit sparsely populated areas or did not make landfall at all,” said Peter Hoeppe, the head of Munich Re’s risk research unit.
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