NU Online News Service, Jan. 4, 2:49 p.m.EST

It probably comes as little surprise that 2011 was significantin terms of insured losses from catastrophes, but the loss figureshave less to do with the number of events as where they took place,according to industry representatives.

In a webinar sponsored by Munich Re today, industryrepresentatives said the 2011 catastrophe season was close toaverage in the number of events, but produced some very expensiveclaim events.

“It is a combination of a strong event causing a lot of physicaldamage with the coincidence that these regions in 2011 were regionswith high-insurance penetration, that caused these high losses,”notes Ernst Rauch, head of corporate climate center for MunichRe.

The year produced $380 billion in global economic losses and$105 billion in insured losses, according to Munich Re's figurescompiled through its NatCatSERVICE. The number of events for theyear, 820, was just slightly above the average of 790 over the last10 years and 630 for the last 30 years.

When compared to the previous year, 2010 was more active interms of number of events, 970, and fatalities (296,000 in 2010compared to 27,000 in 2011). However, insured losses only came to$42 billion and economic loss to $152 billion.

Unlike years past, most of the 2011 insured losses occurred intheAsiaregion, primarily the result of the Tohoku earthquake andsubsequent tsunami that caused $40 billion in insured losses. Addedto that were the earthquakes inNew Zealandand floodinginAustraliaandThailand.

Asia accounted for 44 percent of worldwide losses and theUnitedStates37 percent. On average, theUnited Statesassumes 66 percent ofinsured losses whileAsiasees 13 percent.

Carl Hedde, senior vice president, head of risk accumulation forMunich Re America, Inc., says that thunderstorm activity intheUnited Statesthat produced numerous tornadoes was to blame for asignificant share of losses. Thunderstorm and tornado activity wasthe deadliest since 1975, exceeding $25 billion in insured lossesof the total $35.9 billion for the year.

There were a total of 69 severe thunderstorm events claiming 617lives in 2011, while tropical cyclone activity, that is usually themajor driver of loss, saw three events that amounted to estimatedinsured losses of $5.5 billion.

It was a “very extreme year” in terms of catastrophe losses fromclimatic events in theUnited States, notes Robert Hartwig,president of the Insurance Information Institute. The year saw arecord number of federal disaster declarations at 99, and if takenas a whole, the spring 2011 tornado and severe storm season wouldbe ranked as the fourth most costly disaster event inU.S.history,Hartwig says.

ForU.S.insurers, the losses increased their combined ratios to108.2 over the first three quarters, compared to a combined ratioof 100.8 for all of 2010.

Hartwig says that most excess capacity has been removed from themarket producing net premium written growth over the past sixquarters, a change from the declines seen in the previousyears.