With natural catastrophes starting to hit, the economy in rough shape, and the courts poised to weigh in on potential business interruption exposures, insurance companies are buckling in for a rough ride ahead, a recent report warns.

Unlike restaurants, bars, salons and gyms, insurance companies didn’t shut down at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re not facing uncertain futures like many businesses that depend on retail traffic. And no matter how they were financially affected, their customers can’t avoid buying their product.

As we head into what is predicted to be an active hurricane season, we can expect major property damage to hit the industry again. But as virtual adjusting and predictive analytics continue to disrupt the claims space, mega property claims remain stubbornly analog.

Allstate Corporation revealed that for the month of June, it has estimated catastrophe losses of $204 million, pre-tax ($161 million, after tax).

Disasters come in all shapes and sizes and are indiscriminate in those they catch up in their chaos. As such, when it comes to disaster planning, it’s essential to account for linguistic diversity.

The final total is far from known for the insurance and reinsurance industry in terms of the cost of the pandemic crisis, but it is expected to be one of the most expensive event price tags in history.

Lloyd’s of London is calling for the creation of new insurance policies and government-backed funds to protect against future pandemics and global threats.

COVID-19 appears to be kindling proud sentiments about employing Canadian adjusters, after social media posts triggered an age-old debate about using U.S. adjusters to handle catastrophe claims in Canada.

Friday’s hail storm in Potter and Randall Counties was declared a catastrophic event, meaning over 500 insurance claims were made in each county. The Insurance Council of Texas is projecting around 2,800 auto claims and around 1,600 homeowners claims in Amarillo from the first round of hail storms in Amarillo.

If you have clients in the Calgary area who suffered property damage in the June 13 hail storm, they could be waiting a while to get their properties repaired, an executive for one independent adjusting firm suggests.




Some Calgary neighbourhoods were hit the evening of June 13 with hail the size of tennis balls, the CP reported earlier.

The photos of the damage are “pretty startling,” Crawford Canada chief client officer Greg Smith told Canadian Underwriter Thursday. “You can’t believe that damage was caused by hail when you look at it.”

Quite often in a thunderstorm, hail drops due to gravity, said Glenn McGillivray, managing director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction.

“In this case we had dow

Allstate Corporation has estimated that for the month of May 2020, it saw catastrophe losses of $350 million, pre-tax. After tax, the insurer’s estimated losses for the month were pegged at $277 million.

The weekend hailstorm that tore up houses, smashed car windows and flooded streets in Calgary is expected to be labelled a natural catastrophe, according to an insurance expert.

As tropical storms become more likely, COVID-19 is changing the ways resulting insurance claims are handled. New tools and practices can help insurers work within physical distancing guidelines, for example. A survey of claims-related organizations reveals how the sector plans to change its processes for this year’s hurricane season.

As nation-wide rioting continues in the US following the death of unarmed George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, comparisons with previous civil disorders in the country suggests it could be a relatively meaningful man-made loss for the re/insurance industry.

Insurance companies would go broke paying all the business-interruption and workers’ compensation claims they could face because of coronavirus and the resulting shutdowns, according to A.M. Best, the insurance ratings agency.