Insurers Paid Out $41.1 Billion to 1.7 Million Policyholders, Mostly in Louisiana and Mississippi

As the five year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.) has assembled statistics and analysis on the response of the insurance industry to the largest natural disaster in U.S. history.

Source: Source: Insurance Information Institute | Published on August 24, 2010

A new white paper from the I.I.I., Hurricane Katrina: The Five Year Anniversary, cited the following key insurance facts on Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, 2005:

- Private sector insurers paid policyholders a total of $41.1 billion after receiving 1.7 million auto, home and business claims. This makes Hurricane Katrina the costliest disaster in the history of the global insurance industry.

- The federal government’s National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) paid out $16.1 billion in flood insurance claims, a dollar amount higher than what the NFIP paid to all of its claimants combined between 1968 and 2004.

- Louisiana and Mississippi incurred about 97 percent of all Katrina-related losses, although Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Tennessee were also impacted.

- Fewer than 2 percent of Katrina homeowners insurance claims in Louisiana and Mississippi were disputed either through mediation or litigation.

- Katrina claims settlement levels were extremely high. By the second anniversary of the disaster, approximately 99 percent of the 1.2 million personal property claims had been settled.

- Private sector insurers paid out anywhere from $2 billion to $3 billion in Katrina-related offshore energy facility claims.