CHINESE FLOODS HAVE COST INSURERS MORE THAN 500M YUAN

Insurers are likely to face claims approaching 1bn yuan ($132.2m) as a result of torrential rain flooding the Yangtze River and Huaihe River valleys in the past couple of months, according to Yuan Li of the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC). Domestic insurers have received 13,000 claims, totalling 680m yuan, from the flood-hit areas of Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hubei, Hunan and Sichuan. Insurers have paid out 20.34m yuan for 3,200 cases so far, Mr Yuan said.  He noted that insured losses in China often amounted to only about 5% of economic losses. “Our media should promote the benefits of insurance to raise public awareness and disperse the risks”, he said. At the weekend, storms and hail killed 11 more people in central and eastern China, adding to the death toll of 715 as a result of this year’s floods, with 129 people still missing. In the Huangpo district of Wuhan, the provincial capital, seven people were killed and 1,600 had to abandon their homes. In Hubei, tens of thousands of people have been mobilised to monitor the embankments of the swollen Han River, a major tributary of the Yangtze. Along eastern China’s Huai River flood waters remain high, but have begun to retreat from flooded villages.