$91 billion, a quiet year by the invoices, and 55% nobody insured

The broker Aon has done the year’s sums so far, and they are calmer than the headlines of the summer suggested. Insured losses from natural disasters reached an estimated $91 billion in the first nine months of 2026¹. That is slightly above the 21st-century average of $88 billion, the lowest for the period since 2019, and well below the $135 billion average of the past five years¹. The third quarter alone cost insurers $29 billion, 31% below the long-term average, and no single event cost them more than $10 billion².

Quiet totals hide busy ledgers. Twenty-three events produced insured losses of at least $1 billion each, against a historical average of 14¹. Severe convective storms, the hail, wind and tornado kind, were again the costliest peril, accounting for roughly $55 billion of insured losses². The costliest insured event of the year so far was not a hurricane but Europe’s drought, at more than $8.5 billion; France alone recorded about $5 billion in insured losses, a record¹. Subsidence is a slow peril: it cracks a wall one dry summer at a time.

Now the gap. Economic losses reached about $204 billion, and roughly 55% of that was not covered by insurance¹. Desk arithmetic: $204 billion minus $91 billion leaves about $113 billion paid by households, firms and governments directly. The extremes sit in Latin America. Aon puts June’s earthquake in Venezuela at about $25 billion in economic losses, with only a small insured share because cover there is thin; Colombia’s August quake cost about $9.6 billion, and there established reinsurance programmes and reserves are expected to carry much of it¹.

“Moderate global totals can mask significant regional impacts and emerging concentrations of risk,” said Michal Lörinc, Aon’s head of catastrophe insight¹. The weather helped, too: the Atlantic got through September without a single hurricane, only the fourth time since 1950, which Aon links to a very strong El Niño¹.

For you, the useful line is the dull one. Check what your home policy says about subsidence, hail and natural hazards (in Germany, “Elementarschäden”), because a quiet year is only cheap for the losses that were insured.