Middle East News - UAE: 97% of fire losses at The Address covered by reinsurers
Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Mar 2016
A panel of international reinsurance companies will bear more than 97% of the total insured losses caused by the fire at The Address Downtown Hotel in Dubai last New Year’s Eve.
Orient Insurance will cover around 3% of the losses, said Mr Omer Hassan Elamin, President of Orient Group in an interview with the Al Ittihad newspaper.
He said Orient had already finalised the allocation of the necessary reserves to cover the losses arising from the fire in its 2015 accounts, and that these reserves have not affected the company’s results for the year.
Orient Insurance’s net profits grew by 8% to AED272 million (US$74.1 million) in 2015 against AED252 million in 2014. GWP jumped by 29% to AED2.33 billion.
Mr Elamin said his company has agreements with a group of ‘A’-rated reinsurance companies, in addition to a panel of reinsurers led by Swiss Re. In addition, there are another seven companies with various shares covering facultative reinsurance operations.
He pointed out that all these reinsurance companies have been extremely supportive over the incident, and that their responses have been swift.
He added that Orient Insurance had appointed experienced international companies to assess the damages caused by the fire and that reparation will be completed very soon in line with agreements. No estimate has so far been reported of the insured losses.
AED1 = US$0.27