NU Online News Service, Dec. 6, 12:54 p.m. EST

Catastrophe modeler Risk Management Solutions says insured losses from the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season will be about $5 billion.

A majority of the losses will be generated by Hurricane Irene, which affected 14 states on the East Coast late in August. North Carolina, New Jersey and New York will take the brunt of the losses from Irene, RMS says.

RMS has estimated between $2 billion and $4.5 billion in insured losses from Irene in the U.S.

The Newark, Calif.-based modeler says the insured losses from Hurricane Irene in the United States and Caribbean will fall between $2.5 billion and $5.5 billion.

Some insured losses will also come from Tropical Storm Lee, which hit the coast of Louisiana in September.

Modeling competitors Eqecat and AIR Worldwide put the range of U.S. insured losses at between $1.5 billion and $2.8 billion, and between $3 billion and $6 billion, respectively.

Differences in the approach and/or methods to modeling—as well as assumptions made based on a limited amount of data—could account for difference in the estimates.

Karen Clark & Co. has come up with a $3 billion loss estimate for the insurance industry after using RiskInsight, a new tool the company developed.

Verisk Analytics' Property Claims Services projects a $4.3 billion tab to then insurance industry from Irene.

The 2011 Atlantic hurricane season ended after a second-straight year of 19 tropical storms but, unlike 2010, this year included a hurricane landfall—the first since Hurricane Ike in 2008.

Of the 19 named storms, seven became hurricanes and three became major hurricanes. No major hurricanes made U.S. landfall this year, marking the sixth-straight year in which no storm of Category 3 or greater has hit the U.S.

Special Reports /

RMS: Hurricane-Season Losses Could Reach $5B

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