The Kahramanmaras Earthquake Sequence in Turkey on 6 February generated an industry loss of US$5.8bn – becoming the largest non-US event loss in 2023, and the largest ever cat loss for Turkey’s insurance market.

This is amongst the findings of CRESTA’s fourth quarter update of its CLIX loss index, which offers benchmark information on natural catastrophe losses incurred by the global insurance industry, providing information for all major (losses in excess of US$1bn) cat events since 2000. In 2023, there were seven such events:

North Island Floods, New Zealand, January 2023
Kahramanmaras Earthquake Sequence, Turkey, February 2023
Cyclone Gabrielle, New Zealand, February 2023
Northern Italy Severe Convective Storms, July 2023
Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Floods (Typhoon Doksuri), China, July-August 2023
Hurricane Otis, Mexico, October 2023
European Windstorm Ciarán, November 2023

The severe convective storms that hit Northern Italy from 19-25 July are estimated to have generated an industry loss of US$2.7bn -- also a record-breaking figure for the Italian insurance market. New Zealand experienced two record-breaking weather events in early 2023 with a combined industry loss of US$2.7bn. Tropical cyclone losses in 2023 were dominated by Hurricane Otis in Mexico in October (also a record loss event for the country on an original loss-cost basis), and the floods in Beijing and surrounding areas following Typhoon Doksuri in early August. In contrast, Japan experienced a benign typhoon season with no typhoon losses above the US$1bn mark.

A further two events in 2023 – severe convective storms in Germany in mid-June and severe convective storms in Eastern Australia in late December – have the potential to exceed the US$1bn loss level, according to the index.

Matthias Saenger, manager at CRESTA CLIX, commented: “While from a global perspective, international Cat losses in 2023 were slightly below the long-term average, several countries experienced record-breaking events, namely Turkey, Italy, New Zealand and Mexico. This situation effectively illustrates the value proposition of global reinsurance: extraordinary or even record-breaking Cat losses on a national market level can represent quite ‘normal’ loss levels in a globally diversified reinsurance portfolio. This scenario was the case in 2023 and explains why this year’s Cat losses were managed so robustly.”

In terms of the overall figure for the billion-dollar-plus events, the international loss tally for 2023 amounts to US$16.7bn – marginally below the annual average of US$17.1bn (adjusted to 2023 values) for the last 23 years.

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