Catastrophic losses are making landfall

While the devastating events triggered by the Boeing 737 Max are fading from the news, the financial impact on the aviation insurance industry remains at the forefront. Just recently, the financial shock of these occurrences has escalated by another $500M.

The grounding of the 737 Max fleet combined with the two Boeing 737 Max accidents (Lion Air and Ethiopian) is now the single biggest claims in aviation insurance history, estimated to be around $3B. This loss in financial terms has now exceeded the $2.5B following 9/11.

Catastrophic events of such a financial scale are not absorbed easily by the marketplace and such stress on our industry’s ecosystem impacts all sectors of our aviation community. As such, our responsibilities as aviation insurance brokers, to maintain insurance costs at a reasonable premium level, becomes increasingly difficult.