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Formal investigations began this week into how the giant
container ship Ever Given ran aground in the canal, shutting
down shipping in the major global waterway for almost a week.
The incident and its impact on hundreds of ships delayed in the
canal would be a "large loss" for insurance market Lloyd's of
London, its chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown said this week, while
Fitch Ratings said global reinsurers were likely to face
hundreds of millions of euros of claims.
Vickers also said reinsurance losses were "not going to be a
small amount of money". The blockage was the latest in a growing
number of man-made disasters leading to reinsurance losses, on
top of a list of natural catastrophes in the past year, he said.
Reinsurers help insurers cover claims for major events such as
hurricanes, in return for part of the premium. Reinsurers
typically raise rates after they experience large losses.
Even before the Suez incident, the marine market "didn't need
much encouragement to keep going in an upward direction",
Vickers said.
Global marine reinsurance rates were generally seeing "high
single digit" percentage point increases, Willis Re said in its
April reinsurance renewals report on Thursday.
Marine reinsurance premiums have been rising for the past few
years after several years of falling rates, as Lloyd's of London
and other firms have cut back on loss-making lines, reducing
competition. The COVID-19 pandemic has also put upward pressure
on reinsurance rates across the board.
Elsewhere, the U.S. property reinsurance market has been hit by
a number of catastrophes including Winter Storm Uri in the
United States in February, with rates up by as much as 25% in
April, the report showed.
(Reporting by Carolyn Cohn; Editing by Nick Tattersall)
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