Hurricane Irma claims paid data reaches $17.44bn in Florida

Finally, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation (FLOIR) has updated its published data on claims paid by the insurance market due to 2017’s hurricane Irma, with the total jumping significantly to just over $17.44 billion.

The last time the FLOIR reported its estimate of the costs incurred by insurance markets from claims due to 2017’s hurricane Irma was in November 2018, when the total stood at a lowly $11.1 billion.

That figure was far below those put out by industry loss estimate specialists, with the reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market largely treating hurricane Irma as an industry event that cost somewhere between $25 billion to as much as $28 billion or so.

Of course, the FLOIR’s estimate is solely for reported insured claims in Florida and only from insurers that report to the regulator, so there is a chunk missing in all of its estimates, when it comes to the full impact of Irma on the insurance, reinsurance and ILS market.

The latest figure of just over $17.44 billion for hurricane Irma’s claims burden on insurers in Florida is actually as of January 10th 2020.

However, it hasn’t been published by the FLOIR until just a few weeks ago, hence this further evidence of the loss creep suffered with this major hurricane went overlooked.

Another factor the data reveals, is that many claims were still not fully closed and paid as of January 2020.

The FLOIR reported that some 4.3% of claims remained open from hurricane Irma at that time, meaning over 45,000 claims were still open at the time, of the huge total of 1.06 million that were filed.

When the FLOIR last reported on the insured loss from 2017’s hurricane Irma, in November 2018, there were still 76,298 claims open, so the rate of closure has not really sped up in the period to January 2020 it seems.

Interestingly, between November 2018 and January 2020 over 60,000 new claims related to hurricane Irma were filed with insurers in Florida, which is a significant number for a storm that was already well over a year in the past.

Commercial property and commercial residential claims remained the slowest to be resolved, with 92.4% of commercial property claims resolved and only 87.7% of commercial residential claims closed, as of January.

Miami-Dade remains the single county of Florida that saw the most claims, at 13% of the total, but it is also the slowest in terms of claims resolution and payment, with only 89.8% of claims closed as of January 2020.

All of which suggests that there has been further for the insurance and reinsurance market loss from hurricane Irma to creep this year and means there could be a further update from the FLOIR later this year.