MUNICH (dpa-AFX) - Increasingly violent storms are expected to cause rising natural catastrophe losses around the world in the coming years, according to reinsurer Munich Re. Last year, floods, storms, forest fires and other natural disasters caused economic losses of $270 billion worldwide, Munich Re said Tuesday.

According to the company's analysis, that was less than in the particularly expensive year of 2021 (320 billion), but it was in line with the "loss-intensive" past five years. The most expensive catastrophe, at $100 billion, was Hurricane oIano, which hit the U.S. East Coast at the end of September 2022, of which insured losses accounted for $60 billion.

Natural disasters are also increasingly expensive for insurers, with about $120 billion of the $270 billion in total losses being insured. "We have something of a new normal with 100 billion annual losses for the insurance industry," said Ernst Rauch, head of geospatial research at Munich Re. "We have exceeded that five times in the recent past. In the future, we will reach or exceed a hundred billion more and more often."

Munich Re has been documenting global losses from natural catastrophes for decades, as the data is also important for calculating insurance premiums./cho/DP/tav/tih