Disaster costs nearly double to $175bn in 2016: Swiss Re

Devastating earthquakes, floods, hailstorms and wildfires, along with man-made devastation, helped push global disaster costs to USD 175 billion (161 billion euros) last year, reinsurer Swiss Re said today.
That was nearly double the 94 billion disasters cost in 2015, the world's number two reinsurer said, adding that only about 30 per cent of last year's losses were covered by insurers.
At the same time, the human cost of disasters was far lower, with some 11,000 people dying or going missing in catastrophic events in 2016, down from 26,000 a year earlier.
The global insurance industry meanwhile covered $54 billion of the total losses last year -- up 42 percent from 2015, Swiss Re said.

Both the economic and the insured losses hit their highest level since 2012, due to the soaring number of disasters, the Swiss company said.
Globally, there were 327 disaster events in 2016, of which 191 were natural catastrophes and 136 were man-made, it said.

The earthquakes on Kyushu Island in Japan in April, which killed around 50 people, inflicted the heaviest economic losses last year, raking up a bill of between USD 25 billion and USD 30 billion.
Only about USD 4.9 billion of that was meanwhile covered by insurers, Swiss Re said.
Devastating earthquakes also hit a number of other countries, including Ecuador last April.

That quake killed 673 people, and caused economic losses of some USD 4.0 billion -- only USD 500,000 of which was insured.
"In many parts of the world, insurance can play a much bigger role in helping households and communities recover from the losses and shock that disasters can inflict", Swiss Re chief economist Kurt Karl said in the statement.
North America, where insurance penetration is high, accounted for more than half of global insured losses, Swiss Re said, pointing to record number of severe storm events in the United States.
A massive hail storm that struck Texas last April was the costliest event for insurers, who covered 86 per cent of the total USD 3.5-billion-bill.