 A re‐examination of the US insurance market's capacity to pay catastrophe lossesGeorges Dionne () and Denise Desjardins Risk Management and Insurance Review, 2022, vol. 25, issue 4, 515-549 Abstract: Cummins, Doherty, and Lo (2002) present a theoretical and empirical analysis of the capacity of the property liability insurance industry in the US to finance catastrophic losses. In their theoretical analysis, they show that a sufficient condition for capacity maximization is for all insurers to hold a net of reinsurance underwriting portfolio that is perfectly correlated with aggregate industry losses. Estimating capacity from insurers' financial statement data, they find that the US insurance industry could adequately fund a $100 billion event in 1997. As a matter of comparison, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 cost the insurance industry $40 to $65 billion (2005 dollars). Our main objective is to update the study of Cummins et al. (2002) with new data available up to the end of 2020. We verify how the insurance market's capacity has evolved over recent years. We show that the US insurance industry's capacity to pay catastrophe losses is higher in 2020 than it was in 1997. Insurers could pay 98% of a $200 billion loss in 2020, compared to 81% in 1997. Date: 2022 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:rmgtin:v:25:y:2022:i:4:p:515-549 Access Statistics for this article Risk Management and Insurance Review is currently edited by Mary A. Weiss More articles in Risk Management and Insurance Review from American Risk and Insurance Association |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.