Hurricanes Helene and Milton impacted insurers’ Q3 earnings, which will likely have a downstream effect on insurance buyers’ rates, according to industry earnings reports.
“While it is too early to know the ultimate insured losses from hurricanes Helene and Milton, we expect there to be an impact on 2025 property insurance and reinsurance pricing,” John Doyle, president and CEO of insurance broker Marsh McLennan, said during an earnings call last week.
In an Oct. 15 earnings release, insurance company Progressive said its catastrophe losses related to Helene totaled $563 million last month. This included $401 million in vehicle losses (including boats and RVs) and $162 million in property losses.
As of Oct. 14, Progressive estimated that it would rack up about $325 million in vehicle losses from Milton and that losses from its property business would not exceed the $200 million reinsurance threshold. It cautioned that these estimates “could change materially” as it continues to process claims.
Insurance company Travelers reported $939 million in pre-tax catastrophe losses in the third quarter, “more than half of which relates to Hurricane Helene,” CFO Dan Frey said during the company’s Q3 earnings call on Oct. 17. “For Travelers, the financial impact of Helene was greater in Georgia and the Carolinas than in Florida,” he added.
Catastrophe losses in its auto insurance segment, “primarily related to Hurricane Helene,” added 4.9 points to the combined ratio, Michael Klein, president of personal insurance at Travelers, said. Its auto segment combined ratio—a measurement of underwriting profitability—still came in “very strong” at 93.4% despite the catastrophe losses, Klein noted.
The story was similar for Travelers’ “homeowners and other” segment. Klein said the segment’s combined ratio was a healthy 91.5%, a 25-point YoY improvement, thanks in part to lower catastrophe losses. Helene and a severe storm in July accounted for catastrophe losses Travelers incurred in this segment in Q3, Klein noted.
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Travelers estimates that Milton caused between $75 million and $175 million in losses, Frey said, calling the estimated range “preliminary.”
Alan Schnitzer, CEO of Travelers, declined to comment on how the hurricanes may impact property insurance pricing, in response to an analyst’s question on the topic.
“We’re not going to share our property pricing strategy, and we’ll all just have to wait and see where the market goes on that,” Schnitzer said during the earnings call. “But clearly, these storms are a reminder of the potential volatility and the things that we’ve all got to be thoughtful about in committing capital to risk.”
Hurricane Helene made landfall as a Category 4 on Sept. 26, and while it wreaked havoc across numerous Southeast states, its most significant damage came from flooding in western North Carolina.
About two weeks later, Hurricane Milton made landfall as a Category 3 storm, weakening from Category 5. Milton was “unusual” in that winds on its northern and northwestern sides were “atypically strong,” and also brought hurricane-force winds south of where it made landfall, Daniel Betten, director of forensic meteorology at CoreLogic, said in a news release.
CoreLogic estimates insured losses from Helene between $10.5 billion and $17.5 billion, and total damage (which includes uninsured wind and flood losses) between $30.5 billion and $47.5 billion. It likewise estimates insured losses from Milton between $17 billion and $28 billion, and total damage between $21 billion and $34 billion.