The net income for this sector has doubled when compared to the same period the year before.
A report on the property and casualty insurance industry has indicated that compared to 2011, when the first nine months brought in a net income of $12.3 billion, the first nine months of 2012 saw well over double that amount at $31.2 billion.
Though this does not include Hurricane Sandy data, the report believes that will have “only a modest impact”.
The report was created by A.M. Best, and was entitled “U.S. P/C Net Income Improves in 3rd Qtr; Sandy’s Impact Yet to be Realized”. The authors did not believe that the impact of Sandy would be significant enough to create any meaningful challenges in the property and casualty insurance industry.
They released a press release on the property and casualty insurance report to draw attention to the findings.
According to A.M Best, “Superstorm Sandy is not expected to create a substantial capital challenge to the [p&c] industry, and even after a record catastrophe year in 2011, the overall position of the [p&c] insurance industry’s balance sheet is strong.” It then added that “A.M. Best anticipates that the industry will absorb these losses without significant impact to its overall financial strength.”
By the time the superstorm had made landfall in New Jersey, it had already been downgraded to the status of being a post-tropical storm. It has been estimated by EQECAT that the insured losses that resulted would be somewhere in the range of $10 to $20 billion, and that the total economic damages would be somewhere between $30 and $50 billion.
Among the property and casualty insurance companies that released their estimates regarding the claims connected to that storm was American International Group, which stated that its after tax losses from that catastrophe, net of reinsurance, were an estimated $1.3 billion.
Another review that had been released by A.M Best back in October provided a six month financial report on the property and casualty insurance sector. In it, it was stated that the first half of 2012 brought in net premiums written worth $228.6 billion. This was an increase of 4 percent over the same period the year before, when the figure was $219.8 billion.
