Swiss insurer: global disaster bill doubled in 2016

Devastating earthquakes, floods, hailstorms and wildfires, along with man-made devastation, helped push global disaster costs to $175 billion (161 billion euros) last year, reinsurer Swiss Re said on Thursday.
That was nearly double the 94 billion disasters cost in 2015, the world's number two reinsurer said, adding that only about 30 percent of last year's losses were covered by insurers. 


At the same time, the human cost of disasters was far lower, with some 11,000 people dying or going missing in catastrophic events in 2016, down from 26,000 a year earlier. 


The global insurance industry meanwhile covered $54 billion of the total losses last year -- up 42 percent from 2015, Swiss Re said. 


Both the economic and the insured losses hit their highest level since 2012, due to the soaring number of disasters, the Swiss company said. 


Globally, there were 327 disaster events in 2016, of which 191 were natural catastrophes and 136 were man-made, it said. 


The earthquakes on Kyushu Island in Japan in April, which killed around 50 people, inflicted the heaviest economic losses last year, raking up a bill of between $25 billion and $30 billion. 


Only about $4.9 billion of that was meanwhile covered by insurers, Swiss Re said

Source: NNA