One year ago, Thailand was living through a year's long disaster. Now the insurance industry is releasing a report about what was lost in the months long event.
Why ? Because it was a $45.7 Billion disaster . It doubled the price of hard drives world wide. It came just months after the 'Great Japanese Earth Quake', and the Honda Plants in Thailand had 3 meters of water in them .
Thai floods' impact still being felt / 1 year on, many small, midsize Japanese companies struggling to recover
This event caused all the bean counters in the great Re-Insurance Market to get to work. By the way, your insurance bill is being set by models. In other words, they ran the numbers on this event very closely.
Some of those numbers :
Dr. Jeff Masters wrote this on Dec. 30th 2011 -
2) Thailand flooding: most expensive natural disaster in Thai history
Heavy monsoon and tropical cyclone rains from July through October, enhanced by La Niña conditions, led to unprecedented flooding that killed 657 people and caused Thailand's most expensive natural disaster in history. Damages are now estimated at $45 billion by re-insurance company AON Benfield. This is 18% of the country's GDP. Hurricane Katrina cost the U.S. about 0.7% of its GDP, so the Thailand floods can be thought of as a disaster 25 times worse than Katrina for that country. Thailand's previous most expensive natural disaster was the $1.3 billion price tag of the November 27, 1993 flood, according to the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). The floodwaters this year have hit 83% of Thailand's provinces, affected 9.8 million people, and damaged four million structures and approximately 25% of the nation's rice crop. Thailand is the world's largest exporter of rice, accounting for 30% of the global total, and the flood has helped trigger an increase in world rice prices in late 2011.
Now the new report comes one year later from the insurance business ........... What did they learn ?
"We never planned for this much damage from a flood , This flood was 1,800 % above the yearly premiums in all Thailand combined.
Now the car markers in Thailand are saying this :
" We may not be able to get insurance "
This report is making news , insurance guys are reading it ,
Flood costs doubled in last decade
http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20121004/BUSINESS04/710049974
Lloyd’s of London analysts examine impact of Thai floods -
According to Lloyd’s analysts, the major of insured losses that insurers saw came from claims regarding business interruption due to the floods. Flooding began in July 25, 2011, in the wake of the powerful tropical Storm Nock-Ten. For months afterward, flood waters spread throughout the country, eventually reaching Bangkok in October, 2011. By the time floods reached Bangkok, many cities were already experiencing waters as high as 10 feet. This caused significant disruption for the country’s businesses.
http://www.liveinsurancenews.com/thai-floods-one-year-later/8515709/
There was a brand new bridge in Greenland the summer , engineered for a "1,000 year flood", ........... steel and concrete . When the Ice sheet thawed, this summer . The runoff ate all off it. I promise you, insurance in the Arctic is about to go up. Just like Thailand.
If you don't believe all this, just keep watching the cost of flood insurance.
