Natural catastrophes continued to place significant pressure on global insurance markets in 2024, with global insured losses exceeding $140 billion, marking the fifth consecutive year that insured damages topped $100 billion.
Total economic damages from these events exceeded $350 billion, underscoring the lack of resilience to climate-related risks. In addition, wildfires in Los Angeles have already caused insurance loss estimates in the region of $30 billion to $40 billion in the first few weeks of 2025.
The Natural Catastrophe Review, a biannual publication, explores the physical, vulnerability, and socioeconomic factors contributing to the largest natural catastrophes in the latter half of 2024. The report goes beyond the statistics, offering insights on improving natural catastrophe risk management and resilience across sectors.
Key highlights include:
“Our long-standing collaboration with scientists gives us better insights into growing exposure to perils, especially perils that are changing rapidly,” commented Helene Galy, head of WTW Research Network. “It’s easy to be lured by the increased sophistication of risk models: a deeper understanding of data and science are critical to identify real improvements and remaining limitations of risk models, to make them more useful to decision-makers.”