From The BBC
21 December 2017
Disasters in 2017 caused losses of $306bn (£229bn), according to estimates from insurance giant Swiss Re. The figure represents a 63% jump from last year, and is well above the average of the past decade. The Americas was hardest hit, with hurricanes in the Caribbean and southern US, earthquakes in Mexico and wildfires in California. Despite the rise in the financial cost of disasters, there was no significant increase in the loss of lives. Swiss Re said more than 11,000 people died or went missing in disaster events in 2017, which is similar to 2016's figure.
A report by the firm's research arm Sigma found insured losses amounted to $136bn (£102bn) - more than double last year's total and the third highest on record. Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria together caused insured losses of about $93bn (£70bn) according to the report. But Swiss Re said the insurance industry had demonstrated that it could cope very well with such high losses, despite gaps in protection remaining. "If the industry is able to extend its reach, many more people and businesses can become better equipped to withstand the fallout from disaster events", said Martin Bertogg, head of catastrophe perils at Swiss Re.
[This seems to be pretty much in line with expectations especially from the continued fallout from the effects of Global Climate Change. It has been long (and confidently) predicted that as the world warms up we’ll get more extreme weather events – floods, droughts etc – more often. Not only that but, on average, the events themselves will become more extreme causing more damage and putting more people’s lives at risk. The recent hurricane season is a good example of that and will, hopefully, come as a wake-up call to those still denying Climate Change itself and the extent to which human activity is driving it. Being the cynic and sceptic that I am I expect it’ll need to get a good deal worse before people wake up and see things how they really are rather than how they’d like them to be. But at least I can hope – it’s almost Christmas afterall……]
2 comments:
I am in the Property and Casualty Insurance industry. I also read a lot about the industry. Climate Change is indeed affecting us. It is flabbergasting that here in America, we have politicians and entire news networks denying that it is happening.
the politicians in this country are ignoring the five P's: prior planning prevents poor performance... plus i think they're all brainwashed by someone or thing...
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