It has been reported that the Australian tropical cyclone Yasi could cause as much as $1.5 billion Australian ($1.49 billion) in insured damage, based on catastrophe modeling by AIR Worldwide Corp. Yasi made landfall last week just north of Mission Beach, causing floods and damaging buildings throughout Queensland.
The region had already been flood-ravaged prior to Yasi by an earlier storm named Anthony, leading experts to make comparisons to devastating the 2006 storm season.
Vineet Jain, principal engineer at Boston-based AIR Worldwide, said, “Losses from Yasi may well exceed those from Cyclone Larry in 2006.” Larry followed a similar path as Yasi, although it tracked slightly to the north and had less intense winds. Larry caused an estimated $540 million Australian ($536.2 million) in insured damage.
Insurers in Florida are requesting rate hikes, even though the state hasn’t seen a hurricane in more than five years, in part because of an increase in claims for sinkholes and other damage.
Homeowners insurance claims filing in Florida for damage caused by sinkholes have nearly quadrupled between 2006 and 2010 statewide, according to a report from the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee issued this week.
A survey of 211 private insurers by the Office of Insurance Regulation found that sinkhole claims increased from 2,360 in 2006 to 6,694 in 2010, at a total cost of $1.4 billion. State-run Citizens Property Insurance paid about $84 million for sinkhole claims in 2009 but only collected $19.6 million in sinkhole premiums. Read more…
The diligence taken in the process of selecting and retaining a third party logistics (3PL) provider can have meaningful impact as to whether a company has a sound transit risk management program and a good claims experience. If your company is looking for guidance on this issue, here are some guidelines provided by Chubb’s Marine Department to use as a reference. Read more…
Reports from researchers at Arizona State and UC Irvine who have investigated earthquakes along the San Andreas fault over the past 700 years suggest that Southern California is overdue for a major shock.
These researchers, as reported by the Insurance Journal, outlined that major quakes take place along the Carrizo Plain which stretches 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles every 45 to 144 years. But, it has been since 1857 that the last major quake ranging from 6.5 to 7.9 on the Richter scale took place at Fort Tejon. The research is contrary to previous studies that suggested the frequency of such large earthquakes to be much lower.
If these academics are correct, they are being mostly ignored by the insurance industry. Availability and cost of Earthquake Insurance continues to improve for most buyers. Capacity is up by about 25% Read more…
Austin, Texas, Police Chief Art Acevedo stopped short of calling the crashing of a small plane into a commercial office building in northwest Austin on Feb. 18 a terrorist act, but U.S. Representative Mike McCaul said he wasn’t so sure it couldn’t be considered one.
The Piper Cherokee PA-28 piloted by Joseph Andrew Stack, 53, crashed into a multi-story office building that housed a U.S. Internal Revenue Services office with 190 employees shortly before 10 a.m. on Feb. 18.
While this may just seem a matter of semantics for journalists, but this is a critical question in insurance.
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