Last month’s winter storm that left dozens of Texans dead, millions without power, and nearly 15 million with water issues could wind up being the costliest disaster in state history.

As Texas begins to thaw out from single-digit temperatures, the state is facing the specter of water damage caused by frozen and burst pipes.

Coverage litigation arising from Winter Storm Uri’s impact on Texas is likely to be significant, due to the vast number of businesses hit both within the state and beyond, legal experts say.

Even as power has flickered back on, the deep freeze San Antonio was cast into last week continues to cause problems in the form of burst pipes, collapsed roofs, and water damage.

The ongoing winter storm event in the United States, named winter storm Uri, is thought likely to become the largest winter storm loss on record for the insurance and reinsurance industry, while the Texas insurance regulator said it could have a bigger impact than hurricane Harvey.

In 2020, the US property and casualty (P&C) insurance industry was dealt a heavy blow by the COVID-19 pandemic but there were other factors at play that put insurers in an even tougher spot, a new report has found.

Catastrophe losses covered by insurance and reinsurance reached $78 billion in 2020 according to Willis Re, which the broker sees as 17% above the 10-year average.

The New Jersey Supreme Court has ordered several insurance companies to pay the amount owed to a public transportation agency related to trains damaged during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

The insurers are on the hook for about $300 million in payments, to cover for the remaining amount owed to the train operator.

NJ Transit, the operator of the trains, had parked 343 locomotives and rail cars from its Meadowlands Maintenance Complex in Kearny prior to Sandy hitting the region. During a previous court proceeding, the agency had argued that the facility had not flooded in the past, hence it left the trains there.

Flood risk insurtech company FloodFlash, which offers an innovative sensor-based approach to support parametric flood insurance triggers, has beaten its own record on rapid claims payment, paying out to one policyholder within ten hours for the impacts of flooding during UK storm Christoph.

The Travelers Companies, Inc. has today reported record net income of $1.3 billion for the fourth-quarter of 2020, driven by an improved underwriting gain, higher favourable reserve development and investment income, and a reduction in catastrophe losses.

Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide, in partnership with experts from the Brookings Institution and AXIS Capital Holdings Limited, has released a report exploring how climate change may affect hurricane risk in the US by 2050. The report specifically focuses on financial losses to residential and commercial properties.

It’s long been established that warming temperatures cause more frequent and intense precipitation. But placing a dollar value on the contribution of climate change to storm damage has been tricky.

The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has secured $1.153 billion of flood reinsurance for the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) for 2021, at a premium of $195.8 million.

Swiss Re has estimated that insurance industry losses from natural catastrophes and man-made disasters amounted to a total of $83 billion in 2020, making it the fifth-costliest year since 1970.

North American hurricane landfalls in November added about $9 billion to the total Atlantic seasonal financial toll in terms of catastrophe losses, Aon said in its latest Global Catastrophe Recap report.