Insurance claims hit record highs in 2011 due to natural disasters

According to Munich Re, earthquakes and other natural disasters in 2011 led to record losses in the insurance industry, which are estimated to have reached $105 billion. The world’s largest reinsurer said that the earthquakes in Japan, and the tsunami that followed, contributed to those totals by adding nearly 16,000 deaths and estimated $35 to $40 billion in damages to the final figures. Munich Re added that the February quake in Christchurch, New Zealand, alone was responsible for another $13 billion in insured damages. Together those two earthquakes caused almost…

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Experts claim catastrophe risk modeling needs to change

The property and casualty insurance business isn’t what it used to be. Traditional methods of deciding risk management worked well in its time. According to the managing director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Process Center (WRMDPC) in Pennsylvania, the time has come where changing the way the industry calculates risk is essential to its survival. In the property and casualty sector, the traditional notion was that catastrophic events only occurred about every 25 years or so. It also counted on the fact that the risks were, for the…

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