FRANKFURT
Insurers paid out around $19.5 billion (Dh71.62 billion) for natural disaster claims in the first half of 2017, almost 40 per cent less than the year-earlier payout of $32 billion, reinsurer Munich Re said on Tuesday.
In addition, some $21.5 billion of losses were uninsured, down from $79 billion a year earlier.
Thunderstorms in the United States caused the most damage overall, causing economic losses of $18.5 billion, of which $13.5 billion was insured, Munich Re said in a review of industry losses. The single costliest catastrophe was flooding in Peru in February and March, which caused $3.1 billion in economic losses, but only $380 million of that was covered by insurance.
“The number of tornadoes observed in the first quarter of 2017 was twice as high as the average for the last 10 years,” Peter Hoeppe, head of Munich Re’s Geo Risks Research, said. (Reuters)
