Canadian wildfires, European floods, Japan and Ecuador earthquakes and U.S. hailstorms over the spring were dramatic enough at the time. Now, the damage these events left behind are leading a number of property/casualty insurers to predict sizable catastrophe losses for the 2016 second quarter.
Here’s a rundown of some of the major industry cat loss estimate disclosures so far:
- XL Group (XL Catlin) said its preliminary net loss estimate for natural catastrophes hit $240 million, pretax, with $100 million in its insurance segment and $140 million for reinsurance. Second quarter earnings will be released on July 27.
- Chubb predicts its catastrophe related pretax losses for Q2 will be $390 million ($315 after tax). Of that number, $320 million came from events in North America, with $70 million in other regions. Chubb originally projected $280 million in pretax catastrophe losses. The company’s estimate covers losses for multiple U.S. weather events, the Japanese and Ecuadorian earthquakes, the Fort McMurray wildfires in Canada and the European floods, among other natural catastrophes.
- Validus Holdings disclosed approximately $60 million in estimated catastrophe losses. For Validus, the Canadian wildfires, Texas hailstorms, and Kumamoto earthquake in Japan were the biggest culprits.
- Aspen Insurance Holdings estimates $65 million in pretax losses relating to the catastrophes it handled, mainly due to Canada wildfires, various U.S. weather events and the Japan earthquakes.
- Kemper Corp. said it faces approximately $52 million in estimated pre-tax catastrophe losses, and does not expect to recover any of them under its catastrophe reinsurance program. While a Texas hail storm created a chunk of those costs, a number of storms were to blame, it said. Plans call for releasing Q2 2016 earnings on Aug. 4.
- Endurance Specialty Holdings said that the Fort McMurray wildfires in Canada, Texas and Europe storms and the Kumamoto earthquakes in Japan dealt it an estimated $55.5 million in losses. Most comes from Endurance’s global catastrophe reinsurance business.
- Cincinnati Financial Corp. expects its Q2 2016 pretax catastrophe losses to hit between $160 million and $170 million. This is an impact on its combined ratio of between 14.4 and 15.3 percentage points, based on estimated property casualty earned premiums. The Q2 2016 property casualty combined ratio will be in the range of 98 and 101, the company said, based on “the effect of the significant storm related losses.” Much of that – about one-third, came from hail damage to commercial properties in San Antonio, Texas.
XL Catlin, in its announcement, said natural catastrophe events for the industry globally should result in more than $16 billion in insurance and reinsurance losses for the second quarter. Chubb put the industrywide insured losses for 25 events in the range of $15 billion to more than $20 billion.
Sources: XL Group/XL Catlin, Chubb, Validus, Aspen Insurance, Kemper, Cincinnati Financial Corp., Endurance Specialty Holdings.