When Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida on Aug. 24, 1992, it became -- at the time -- the costliest and most damaging hurricane to ever hit the U.S. It destroyed 63,000 homes, stripping many down to their concrete foundations, and damaged 124,000 others.

Parts of northern Texas, mired in a drought labeled as extreme and exceptional, are flooding under torrential rain. In a drought. Sound familiar? It should.

Insurance claims for businesses in North America have become more severe over the past five years due to factors like higher property and asset values, more complex supply chains, and the growing concentration of exposures in natural catastrophe-prone locations.

Insurers have paid or reserved to pay $13.1 billion on all types of Hurricane Ida-related claims in Louisiana through June 30, Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon announced today.

Once again, the U.S. led the way in the first half of 2022 with the highest level of weather-related losses, which, globally, reached $65 billion in the period, of which slightly more than 50% were covered by re/insurance, according to Munich Re.

‘Climate change has its fingerprints all over’ the increasingly costly wildfire activity we’ve seen in recent years, says Triple-I non-resident scholar Dr. Craig Clements, even though most fires are ignited by people.

While the "heat apocalypse" that is baking much of Europe may seem like just more of the same extreme weather we’ve been experiencing globally for years now, it seems to me that we’ve now reached a new level of disruption, with significant implications for insurers.

A fire at a busy warehouse leaves a company struggling to replace its buffer stock; a ransomware attack paralyzes a company’s IT systems; the use of industrial adhesives in manufacturing results in a costly product recall: every day companies around the globe, together with their insurers, experience losses, in multiple forms, in the millions of dollars. Over the past five years, fire and explosion, natural catastrophes and faulty workmanship or maintenance have been the major causes of loss by value of insurance claims, according to the Global Claims Review 2022 from Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty (AGCS).

A severe thunderstorm knocked out power to more than 100,000 homes in Baltimore, Carroll and Harford counties Tuesday, according to Baltimore Gas and Electric.

The Treasury Department is growing increasingly concerned that climate change is making property insurance scarce in disaster-prone areas and is looking at launching the first nationwide assessment of insurers’ financial exposure to climate risk.

I’ve spent my entire career trying to develop and improve catastrophe and weather-related models and analytics. So, from a personal perspective, if there’s one thought among many others that I would like to get across, it’s a sense of the opportunity to enhance decisions linked to climate risk mitigation and resilience if we use our ever-improving scientific understanding and modeling capabilities wisely.

And I think there’s one thing that holds an important key to unlock that opportunity – openness. When I talk about openness, I don’t mean a willingness from governments and others to set out and stick to commitments to reduce emissions – although that would be rather helpful, of course. I’m referring to two things, actually.

Nebraskans have watched severe weather track across the state in waves since May, devastating some areas multiple times. In Kearney, Realtor Patrick Slack can only shake his head at the damage. A commercial building was so badly pummeled by hail that the loss was larger than the sale price, Slack said.

Losses from the severe convective storm peril are already on-track to surpass $20 billion again in 2022, according to Aon’s Impact Forecasting.

CoreLogic has said that New York and Miami have the most homes at risk of storm surge damage, alongside the highest reconstruction cost value. According to the firm, its 2022 Hurricane Report shows that nearly 7.8m homes with more than $2.3tn in combined reconstruction cost value (RCV) are at risk of hurricane-related damages.

As employees continue to work from home in either a full-time capacity or hybrid model, companies need to consider the rising risk of natural disasters. When employees are expected to be productive from home, how are they to manage the demands of the ‘office’ after their property is severely damaged and their lives are disrupted?