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January 13, 2021 4:00 AM Ed Leefeldt - Forbes Advisor
Posted:
Updated:
January 15, 2021 4:14 AM
After a 2020 filled with hurricanes and wildfires, this year could be the moment when the U.S. insurance industry finally grapples with climate change. Who will win that wrestling match? Insurers? Homeowners? Or the increasingly challenging environment?
“The alarm bells are now ringing loudly,” says Karen Collins, who handles home insurance and other personal lines for the American Property Casualty Insurance Association (APCIA). “Climate change is leading to skyrocketing costs to insure and rebuild.”
While big multinational insurers like Munch Re and Swiss Re have been watching worldwide warming trends for more than a decade, U.S. property-casualty insurers have for the most part kept their heads down and relied on the huge $825 billion surplus in their war chests to keep them afloat.
A New Year’s Nightmare: COVID-19 Litigation Piling Up
Illustration by Tim Peacock
More than 1,000 lawsuits across industries have been filed against insurance firms over pandemic claims as Hollywood’s largest companies take a wait and see approach on who prevails in court. Unprecedented has become a buzzword amid the pandemic, but when it comes to the financial fallout from business interruptions and the resulting landscape of lawsuits against insurance companies that are denying claims, there truly has never been a fight of this scale.
The 1970s brought a wave of business interruption suits against insurers involving asbestos contamination; in the ’80s, environmental pollution led to courtroom fights; and the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, launched a litany of legal disputes, the last of which didn’t end until 2018. Yet the legal war over COVID-related insurance claims is expected to dwarf any of those battlefields, according to those entrenched in this niche o
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