Swiss Re estimates global insured losses from disasters at $79bn for 2018
Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Jan 2019
Total economic losses from natural and man-made catastrophes in 2018 declined to $155bn from $350bn in 2017, according to preliminary sigma estimates from Swiss Re. Natural catastrophes caused $146bn while man-made disasters caused $9bn of the total economic losses.
Global insured losses are estimated to be about $79bn, higher than the annual average of the previous 10 years. Swiss Re noted that over half of the losses were insured, showing “the significant contribution of the insurance sector to mitigating catastrophe risk”.
Swiss Re said a number of smaller and mid-sized loss-generating disaster events across all regions in 2018 affected regions with well-established insurance covers, and for these reasons, 2018 is currently the fourth-costliest year on sigma records in terms of losses covered by the insurance industry.
The majority of the impacts and losses were driven by events in the second half of 2018, with the US hurricanes, Japanese typhoons and flooding, as well as the California wildfires the major drivers of insured losses.
Globally, more than 11,000 people have died or gone missing in disaster events in 2018 with the earthquake in Sulawesi, Indonesia in September claiming the highest human toll of the year with more than 3,500 estimated dead or missing.
According to the report, the losses from the 2018 series of events “highlight the increasing vulnerability of the ever-growing concentration of humans and property values on coastlines and in the urban-wildlife interface. The very presence of human and property assets in areas such as these means extreme weather conditions can quickly turn into catastrophe events in terms of losses inflicted.” M