Year 2017 may be costliest year for insurers

With its string of hurricanes, floods and other weather shocks, 2017 may be the most expensive year on record for disaster losses, insurance experts warned. Hurricane Harvey in Texas alone cost $180 billion, with just $19 billion of that loss insured, said members of ClimateWise, a network of 28 insurance industry organisations. Over the last decade, only 30 per cent of catastrophic disaster losses were insured, leaving governments, businesses and others to pick up the remaining $1.7-trillion tab, noted Swiss Re, the world’s second-largest re-insurer and a member of ClimateWise. The growing gap between the amount insured and actual losses is a threat not just to owners of sodden homes, wind-flattened businesses and governments facing ballooning recovery bills, but even to the insurance industry itself, the network warned in a report.