Three weeks after Hurricane Sandy slammed into the New Jersey coast, one insurance company there says it has fielded more than twice the amount of claims the company got from Hurricane Irene.According to a report by Best News Service, New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Group, which writes nearly all of its business in New Jersey, had, as of November 20, tallied 49,191 claims due to Sandy.While the company received about 22,000 claims total from Irene, It has so far counted 40,388 homeowners claims, and 8,803 automobile claims.Claims reporting has fallen off since the time just after the storm, but the company says it expects the total number to crest 50,000.“New Jersey has a long history of not having storms like this,” Scott Markulec, the company’s director of personal lines and ceded reinsurance told Best News.”Other than Irene, which was inland flooding, you’d have to go back to 1903 or 1904 that even resembles Sandy.”Mr Markulec said the most common claims for home damage has been wind and falling objects. He said storm surge, which is excluded from a standard homeowners policy, is also a culprit, and is contributing to auto losses. Markulec said a large portion of the company’s reported auto claims are due to flooding, which has been a greater issue for the company with Sandy than it was with Irene.Mr Markulec agreed with a statement made last week by Kevin O’Donnell, president and global chief underwriting officer for Bermuda-based RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd., when he mused that Sandy could be the largest auto catastrophe the United States has seen.New Jersey Manufacturers Insurance Group writes an overwhelming percentage of its overall homeowners (97.6 percent) and private passenger auto business (98.3 percent) in New Jersey, according to BestLink, A.M. Best Co.’s online financial system.The group in 2011 wrote homeowners direct premiums in New Jersey of $165.5 million, while it wrote $859.5 million of direct private passenger auto premiums.Markulec said the company was proactive, even before Irene, in its planning for a large-scale catastrophe. Eric Stenson, spokesman for the company, said lessons learned from Irene helped the company to be even better prepared for Sandy.“It helped to develop a streamlined process for claims reports and asking initial questions during times of greatest volume of incoming claims reports,” Mr Stenson said. “It also helped us to assign and manage an extremely high volume of claims efficiently and effectively.”Sandy made landfall October 29 just southwest of Atlantic City as a post-tropical cyclone, according to catastrophe modelling firm AIR Worldwide. According to some industry estimates, the effects of Sandy are expected to tally up to $25 billion in insured losses, which is nearly six times the $4.3 billion caused by Irene.