The Costliest Hurricanes to Insurers

With insured monetary losses of $65 billion at the time and $102 billion adjusted for 2023 inflation, Hurricane Katrina was the costliest for insurers in U.S. history. Apart from Hurricane Ian, which made landfall in 2022 and was the deadliest hurricane in Florida since 1935, insured losses of previous destructive storms like Sandy, Harvey and Maria amounted to around half of Katrina's each.

Data from Aon published by the Insurance Information Institute shows that half of the costliest hurricanes for insurance companies took place in the past ten years, with another three occurring in the 2000s. The 2024 edition, which is current as of January 2024, includes "losses sustained by private insurers and government-sponsored programs such as the National Flood Insurance Program". The latter was excluded up until the 2018 edition of the ranking. 

Looking at overall cost estimations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Katrina was the costliest hurricane to ever hit the U.S., with total economic losses as high as $200 billion in 2023 dollars. Only four hurricanes exceeded the $100-billion-dollar mark in inflation-adjusted cost in the country's history, all of which occurred after the year 2004.

While it's unclear if Tropical Storm Helene, which is expected to make landfall this week in Florida as a full-blown hurricane and will likely spread through large parts of the Southeastern U.S. according to CNN reporting, will enter the list of the costliest hurricanes both to insurers and in total, the state of Florida is preparing for the worst: A flood watch has been issued for over 20 million people in the region, both Florida State Guard and Florida National Guard are being activated and evacuation orders are already in place in many of the counties thought to be most affected by Helene.