Sunday, February 27, 2011

Quake pushes reinsurance prices up after Australia flood

Noah Buhayar in Bloomberg News writes about an issue that puts pressure on adaptation to climate impacts: New Zealand’s deadliest earthquake in eight decades, which toppled buildings and trapped workers in Christchurch, the country’s second-largest city, may lead to higher prices for reinsurance in the Asia-Pacific region. Rates may climb as companies including Munich Re and Swiss Reinsurance Co. take losses, compounding costs from last month’s flooding in Queensland, Australia, Credit Suisse Group AG wrote in a note to clients on Feb. 22. Reinsurance rates in other regions probably won’t be affected, Credit Suisse said.

“Losses are building in the reinsurance industry in the first quarter,” Credit Suisse wrote in the note. “With continued high levels of excess capital in the global reinsurance industry, the losses suffered to date are unlikely to be sufficient to cause a turn in global pricing, although we would expect pricing in the Asia-Pacific region to increase.”

…Reinsurers sell coverage to providers of primary insurance such as Allianz SE and American International Group Inc. to help protect against the cost of major claims. Reinsurance prices on policies renewed Jan. 1 worldwide declined 7.5 percent, according to the Guy Carpenter Global Property Catastrophe Rate on Line Index. Rates fell 6 percent a year earlier….

St Andrews College, Papanui Road. Liquefaction, causing water and silt to squirt up from underground. Shot by Tim, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

1 comment:

stock trading said...

“Losses are building in the reinsurance industry in the first quarter,” Credit Suisse wrote in the note. “With continued high levels of excess capital in the global reinsurance industry, the losses suffered to date are unlikely to be sufficient to cause a turn in global pricing, although we would expect pricing in the Asia-Pacific region to increase.”