Global insurance industry losses were 40 to 45 per cent below normal for the first half of this year, according to Gallagher Re’s chief science officer.

Steve Bowen said that amounted to losses of between $30 billion to $35 billion.

“We are just not seeing that same level of activity that has driven record volumes of losses over the last five years,” Mr Bowen said.

Mr Bowen spoke in a webinar Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook and Natural Catastrophe Update alongside experts from Colorado State University and Gallagher Re.

He suggested that starting the year still in remnant La Niña conditions and then transitioning to El Niño could have led to more stable weather pattern, contributing to fewer extreme events.

During an El Niño event the eastern Pacific typically becomes warmer and wetter, while the Atlantic experiences a quieter hurricane season due partly to increased wind shear.

In a La Niña phase the opposite happens with waters in the Atlantic becoming warmer than normal.

However, there can still be hurricanes in the Atlantic during an El Niño year.

Mona Hammati, global tropical cyclone peril lead at Gallagher Re said the insurance industry is defined by outliers.

“The year 2004 was a weak El Niño, but resulted in ten different tropical storm and hurricane landfalls into the US,” Dr Hammati said. “We cannot treat every El Niño as a safe harbour for underwriting. We need to account for all of this volatility that can exist across the season to be able to manage the risk properly.”

She said 2004 losses were way beyond many of the losses that happened in the neutral and La Niña events.

Phil Klotzbach, a meteorologist from CSU said that damage is driven by individual exposure.

“So much of it is about the strength of the storm and where it makes landfall,” Dr Klotzbach said. “When I was a geography major, my professors always stressed it is all about location, location, location.”

He said unexpected things happen, and pointed to 2010, which was predicted to be a busy year for hurricanes.

“We had 12 hurricanes in the Atlantic basin, but not one made US landfall,” he said.

During the webinar, attendees also heard how the 2026 Florida reinsurance market saw about a 22.8 per cent average pricing decrease compared to last year.

Adam Schwebach, head of North American property at Gallagher Re said this signalled a move away from the hard market conditions seen in the last few renewal cycles.

Four years ago Florida enacted a number of legislative changes to the insurance industry including tougher standards for bad faith lawsuits.

“The reforms that were achieved in 2022 have had a monstrous impact on the overall insurance and reinsurance market in the in the state of Florida,” Mr Schwebach said. “This was a huge part of conversations with reinsurers this year. They now have the information and the resolve to price according to to a new environment in Florida.”