The economic losses generated by natural and technical catastrophes reached 175 billion USD in 2016, compared to 94 billion USD in 2015. This is the conclusion of the latest report conducted by Swiss Re, which identified 327 events for the past year.
Only 30.8% of the damage in 2016 is borne by the insurers, that is 54 billion USD (38 billion USD in 2015). Natural catastrophes accounted for 85.2% of the total amount, the remaining 14.8% stemmed from man-made catastrophes (aircraft crashes, fire in factories, etc.).
The United States alone generated nearly half of the losses pertaining to natural catastrophes. The most expensive disaster in the United States remains Hurricane Matthew with 12 billion USD of economic losses and 4 billion USD of insured losses. The Texas hailstorm of April 2016, comes second, with 3.5 billion USD in material damage, 86% of which were borne by insurers.
The series of earthquakes that struck Japan in 14 and 16 April 2016 remain the most costly catastrophe for reinsurers (4.9 billion USD).
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