Floyd seen testing U.S. insurers' loss strategies
By Patricia Vowinkel
NEW YORK, Sept 15 (Reuters) - U.S. insurers expect to take a serious pounding from Hurricane Floyd but are better protected today than they were in 1992, when the infamous Hurricane Andrew struck south Florida.
Insurers, stunned by Hurricane Andrew's fury, have since scaled back their operations in the hurricane-prone Southeast and have loaded up on reinsurance designed to give them extra cash in the event of another huge catastrophe.
Hurricane Floyd, one of the strongest storms ever tracked in the Atlantic, will be the first big test of these post-Andrew strategies.
And with Hurricane Gert waiting in the wings, the industry could face a damaging one-two punch.
Floyd -- described as being the size of Texas -- had top winds Wednesday of 135 mph (217 kph), making it a strong Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, capable of badly damaging houses, tearing down trees, and leveling mobile homes.
The storm currently is expected to make landfall near the South Carolina-North Carolina border early on Thursday morning.
``It's the first big test since Andrew to see how these catastrophe mitigation steps have worked, and to see how well things like catastrophe securitization products work,' said Bear Stearns analyst Michael Smith.
But, he said, Gert may pose even more of a threat than Floyd because insurers may not have sufficient reinsurance to protect them from a second powerful storm.
``Gert could be a real issue, much more so than Floyd,' he said.
Insurers with the greatest risk from Floyd include State Farm and Allstate Corp (NYSE:ALL - news), the nation's No. 1 and No. 2 insurers of homes and autos.
Nationwide, USAA, State Auto Financial Corp (Nasdaq:STFC - news) and CNA Financial Corp (NYSE:CNA - news), and Hartford Financial Services Group Inc (NYSE:HIG - news) also insure homes and autos in North and South Carolina.
``It is the biggest hurricane threat since Andrew, but it's still not exactly clear how much damage will be caused,' Insurance Information Institute spokesman Steven Goldstein said.
Until the storm makes landfall, he said, it is difficult to predict the potential magnitude of the insured losses.
Hurricane Andrew still ranks as the worst catastrophe in U.S. history in terms of insured losses, which totaled $15.5 billion.
``It was a wake-up call for the insurance industry and the state regulators,' Goldstein said. ``The fact is, before Andrew, no one believed you could have a hurricane with $15 billion in insured losses,' he said.
Insurers have taken steps to protect themselves, and their other policyholders, by turning windstorm coverage in some coastal counties in Florida over to the state and raising deductibles for homeowners in other areas.
Many homeowners now have to pay windstorm deductibles of 2-5 percent of the insured value of their homes before they are covered by their insurance, Goldstein said.
At 5 percent, that means a homeowner would have to pay a $10,000 deductible on a home valued at $200,000.
In the past, deductibles often were a flat $1,000, he said.
But with a storm the size of Floyd, insurers still face significant losses, which are likely to take a toll on the industry's third quarter earnings, analysts said.
``This isn't going to be good in terms of the immediate earnings impact,' SBC Warburg Dillon Read analyst Michael Lewis said.
Earnings have already been under pressure for several quarters as the industry wages a price war on its commercial property business.
Companies that will be closely watched include Allstate Corp, which restructured its business to reduce the threat of catastrophe losses. The company says it now faces a maximum $1 billion loss for a one-in-100 year storm.
Other insurers to watch include Hartford, Chubb Corp (NYSE:CB - news), State Auto (Nasdaq:STFC - news) and Travelers Property Casualty Corp (NYSE:TAP - news). Bermuda-based insurers such as ACE Ltd (NYSE:ACL - news) and XL Capital Ltd (NYSE:XL - news) also could face losses on their property-catastrophe reinsurance business. RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd (NYSE:RNR - news), LaSalle Re Holdings Ltd (NYSE:LSH - news) and PartnerRe Ltd (NYSE:PRE - news), also provide property-catastrophe reinsurance.
Shares of major insurers were generally up, as of midday Wednesday. In the insurance industry, bad news can sometimes mean good news, if the losses are large enough to force insurers to raise rates.
Shares of Allstate rose 3/4 to 32-7/8, Chubb rose 1/4 to 56-5/16, Travelers Property rose 1/2 to 34-3/8, CNA rose 7/17 to 36-1/4, Hartford rose 1/8 to 47-1/16, State Auto fell 1/4 to 10-1/2, ACE rose 3/8 to 20-1/4 and XL rose 1/8 to 47-15/16.
Losses from Floyd may be large enough to help increase rates on property-catastrophe reinsurance, but analysts said they doubt the hurricane will provoke rate hikes in other lines of commercial property insurance. |
