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Insurers face big bill from Aussie flood

Damage: A car is washed away in the floodwaters in Queensland

Insured losses from the recent flooding in Australia could top $6 billion, and earnings estimates for Bermudian reinsurers are at risk as a result, Barclays Capital said yesterday.Barclays analyst Jay Gelb cited early estimates for $4 billion of losses from flooding this month and $2 billion from the floods in December.Because both events were so large and happened on different calendars, that could force reinsurers into losses greater than those they expected for both last year and this year.“We are not changing EPS estimates at this point for the reinsurers we cover, although our current (fourth-quarter) and 2011 estimates could be at risk especially for the Bermuda reinsurers,” Gelb said in a note.Reconstruction costs from the flooding are expected to peak at up to A$20 billion ($19.96 billion).Damages of $6 billion would rank the disaster as Australia's most expensive since at least 1980, based on a list compiled by Munich Re, the world's biggest reinsurer, of the nation's 10 costliest natural catastrophes in the past 30 years.Insurers paid $2 billion on a Sydney hailstorm in 1999 and $1 billion on a Newcastle earthquake in 1989. Neither figure has been adjusted for inflation.Some of the most expensive losses are likely to come from flooded coal mines and damaged railway tracks.