Just when it looked like this year's hurricane season had passed largely without event, Hurricane Sandy appeared - which is presently battering a huge swathe of the US east coast. And the storm looks set to generate hefty losses for the world's insurers.
With the storm still raging as Investors Chronicle went to press, it's too early to make precise loss estimates. But some figures are beginning to appear. Risk specialist RMS, for example, points out that Hurricane Irene, which struck a similar region last year, caused around $4.5bn (£2.8bn) of insured losses. Yet RMS notes that the "Sandy event is much more severe" and that it has "impacted New York City to a much worse degree than Irene". Meanwhile, AIR Worldwide, another risk modeller, thinks the loss could be between $7bn and $15bn, although that doesn't reflect possible losses arising from infrastructure damage, such as flooded tunnels and subways.
But it remains to be seen whether the losses will be sufficiently large to generate meaningful premium rate increases for underwriters. In comparison, 2005's Hurricane Katrina did push premium rates up - but the insured loss was far larger at around $45bn.
