New Orleans Insurance

Washington - Hurricane Katrina is virtually certain of the natural disaster the most expensive in the history of USA, but companies ensure that the houses, shops and cars, they are not worried.

“We are naturally ready to work with this,” said Dick Luedke, spokesman for State Farm, the largest insurers Katrina’s desert.

Carrier insurance face a $ 35 billion in preliminary damage estimates, based in California Risk Management Solutions.

But this is only a small fraction of the damage tab of the company said. The figures of total economic losses from the hurricane and what he calls the Greater New Orleans-tide will be available beginning at $ 100 billion.

The only thing comparable, RMS said, 1953 was flooded storm wind, a subgroup of sea level in the Netherlands in 1800 and the massacre inundating 47000 properties. It took six months to pump water, the company said.

Katrina damage is likely to exceed $ 21 billion cost of Hurricane Andrew, which Hit Florida in 1992 and resulted in a snowstorm debt has the effect that 12 insurance providers go under.

But this week, Assekuranz representative said that companies consider that “Katrina” in the way politics are willing to shoulder the load.

“During this event may be the surprise of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, certainly not as a surprise to us,” said Robert Hartwig, Senior Vice President and Chief Economist for the insurance industry Information Center.

“The events of this kind are good, what we have in the plan,” he said. “The industry is fully capable of paying these debts, and there is no risk of insolvency”.

That can not be true for tens of thousands of homeowners, however.

Homeowner insurance covers expenses for damage caused by the use of house Katrina strong winds and a related damage to water the wind. But for homeowners whose loss is mainly by floods barrage of injuries, they are only if you buy national flood insurance.

Hartwig said that New Orleans, about a quarter of homeowners had a plethora of national insurance, coverage by FEMA by the policy to all riders assurance.

While the national flood insurance is mandatory, floods and vulnerable areas is a prerequisite for obtaining a mortgage, many homeowners in ruins and its policy, according to industry sources, banks to monitor compliance with evil.

“I think it is safe to say that the vast majority have not,” said Tiffany O’Shea, spokesman for the American Insurance Association.

This means that tens of billions of dollars in Katrina damage not covered by insurance. And while the federal government usually step forward in such situations, with subsidized loans to cover uninsured damage, which does more than on debt homeowners, you can practically nothing other than the country, if finally the New Orleans dries out.

“When people walk away from these properties, banks maintain until the end of May mortgages, with little or no value,” said Hartwig.

If the experiment is Hurricane Andrew in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, where Katrina serious impressed Home Insurance prices next year will be an increase.

The American Insurance Association’s Julie Pulliam, Florida, said in this state in the country has doubled, and went to 200 per cent in areas where damage was Andrew’s worse. Since then, Florida adopt a reinsurance programme aims to contribute to compensate the insurance companies aviation in the high cost of storms, and it remains the only state with such a program in the books.

After four hurricanes in Florida made last year, which is a shame collective of nearly 23 billion dollars, prices this year are between 15 percent and 20 percent of the American Association of Insurance said.

While the effects on the insurance sector is the sustainability of this period, industry sources have indicated that most concern are always storms. The 2005 hurricane season, nearly half closely and some meteorologists, forecasting an escalation in the number and severity of hurricanes in the years to come.

State Farm, questions of almost 35 per cent of all home and auto insurance sold in Louisiana and other high rate in Mississippi and Alabama, has shipped 2600 catastrophic rights specialists on the region, equipped with checkbooks.