Claims related to Hurricane Sandy appear set to be split almost 50-50 between primary insurers and reinsurers, according to a report by DowJones.The report cites estimates from JP Morgan, which estimates Sandy will cost the industry up to $25 billion. The company also estimates that insurer dividends look safe due to low costs for natural disasters in the first nine months of the year — keeping annual disaster costs of $45 billion year-to-date well within the five-year average.This follows the announcement this week from Swiss Re, the world’s second-largest reinsurer, that it expects a $900 million bill from Sandy.The Zurich-based company also estimates total market losses could be as much as $25 billion, excluding any claims paid by the federal flood insurance programme. The losses are before tax and net of retrocession, or reinsurance bought from other reinsurance companies. The estimate may change as the company continues to assess its claims, company said.Previously, Oakland, California-based Eqecat, a catastrophic risk modeller, estimated Sandy may result in insured losses of as much as $20 billion across the industry.“The hurricane hit the densely populated Northeast coast of the US,” Matthias Weber, Swiss Re’s chief underwriting officer, said in the statement. “This led to prolonged power outages, disruption to public transport and damage to other infrastructure that have made recovery efforts very difficult.”Swiss Re’s estimate is subject to a higher than usual degree of uncertainty and may need to be adjusted, Mr Weber said.The claims burden “is more than I expected”, said Christian Muschick, an analyst at Frankfurt-based Westend Brokers. “The question is if this will be general trend or company specific.”Allstate Corp, meanwhile, expects to report October disaster losses of $1.08 billion, mostly due to superstorm Sandy, the American insurer said yesterday.Allstate, the largest publicly traded home and auto insurer in the country, said its gross losses were $1.28 billion but that it expected to recover about $200 million in reinsurance.The company said two-thirds of the losses are in New York state, while 20 percent are in New Jersey and the rest are elsewhere. Allstate said it had already paid $340 million in claims as of last Monday.Still, the company’s Sandy losses are not as severe as the $1.4 billion hit the company took from US tornadoes in April 2011.