CARRIERS CONTINUE TO ASSESS HURRICANE DAMAGES

Property insurers yesterday continued to issue loss estimates from the recent series of hurricanes in the Caribbean and the southeast US, with several carriers — including XL Capital and American Financial Group — conceding that storm losses would force them to miss Q3 and full-year earnings projections. Bermuda's XL Capital expected its net claims from hurricanes Frances and Ivan to be $70m and $150m, respectively. The company said that the bulk of the Frances losses would come from its reinsurance business, while losses from Ivan would be about evenly split between its insurance and reinsurance operations. American Financial Group, based in Cincinnati, said that its after-tax losses, net of reinsurance, from hurricanes Frances, Ivan and Jeanne will be around $18m. Cincinnati Financial has estimated that pretax losses from the three storms will be around $74m. The company said that it is still tallying losses from hurricane Jeanne. Elsewhere, Bermuda-based reinsurer Montpelier Re Holdings expects Q3 earnings to be reduced by $185m to $235m owing to losses from the four recent US hurricanes and two typhoons in Japan. The estimate includes an $8m reduction in the range of expected losses from Charley, Frances and Ivan to around $18m. Transatlantic Holdings, the New York-based reinsurance affiliate of AIG, said that after-tax losses from Frances, Ivan and Jeanne will amount to around $65m. The company previously estimated after-tax losses of $32.5m from hurricane Charley. Horace Mann Educators put its net of reinsurance losses from the four hurricanes at between $50m and $65m pre-tax.