The Costliest Hurricanes to Insurers

According to initial estimates, Hurricane Ian could be the second most expensive storm in terms of insured monetary losses in U.S. history. Even at the lowest range of estimations, the storm which ravaged the Florida West coast last week exceeds the insured losses of previous destructive storms like Sandy, Harvey and Maria as well as last year’s Ida. Only the massive damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005 seems to definitely exceed insured losses caused by Ian.

Dan Dick, global head of catastrophe management at insurance and financial services firm Aon, told industry publication Insurance Insider yesterday that he believed the losses to likely remain at the lower range of estimations given so far. It remains to be seen how much of the cost would be shouldered by private insurers and how much would be paid by government programs like National Flood Insurance, Dick said. The rest of the data on the chart is also being supplied by Aon via the International Insurance Institute and includes both types of insurance.

Katrina was the costliest hurricane to ever hit the U.S., with total economic losses as high as $170 billion, according to NOAA (adjusted for inflation). The deadliest hurricane to hit the U.S. in recent years was Maria in 2017, which caused almost 3,000 deaths, mostly in Puerto Rico. The confirmed death toll of Hurricane Ian stood at nearly 100 on Tuesday morning, according to some sources, as rescue efforts continued and many people remained missing.