It would take an insured loss of at least $115 billion to force a meaningful repricing of the global catastrophe reinsurance market, Gallagher Re has concluded, underscoring how flush with capital the industry remains despite a punishing start to the year.
That figure eclipses Hurricane Katrina, still the costliest single insured catastrophe on record at roughly $105 billion in 2024 prices, as estimated by Swiss Re.
The only time clustered events came close was in 2017, when hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria drove global insurance losses 111% above trend, Swiss Re research shows.
Gallagher Re's Q1 2026 Natural Catastrophe and Climate Report found that economic losses from natural perils totaled at least $58 billion in the quarter, 12% under the 10-year average.
Insured losses came in at a minimum of $20 billion, 26% below the decadal mean, leaving reinsurance budgets intact heading into peak season.
A succession of severe convective storm (SCS) outbreaks across the United States front-loaded much of the damage. The reinsurance broker tagged both the March 10-12 and March 15-16 events as billion-dollar-plus industry losses, with straight-line winds cutting across more than two dozen states in the latter episode. Separate outbreaks hit earlier in the month, and the peak SCS window has yet to open.
The pattern has been intensifying. US SCS insured losses have breached $50 billion in each of the past three years, a run Moody's has described as no longer an anomaly but an industry expectation.
Swiss Re's 2023 figures put SCS losses at a then-record $64 billion, with 85% concentrated in the US. Aon's most recent annual review pegged the 2025 global SCS toll at $61 billion, the third-highest on record.
Gallagher Re attributes 80% to 90% of the annual nominal loss growth this century to factors unrelated to the hazard itself: rising replacement costs, social inflation, construction expenses and a surge of housing in exposed areas.
Texas alone added at least 4.5 million residential properties between 2000 and 2025, part of a broader expansion of 14.3 million units across the 20 states most prone to severe storm losses.
Windstorm activity pushed Q1 to the continent's highest economic losses since 1999. No individual event crossed the $10 billion insured mark, but the cumulative toll has reignited debate over whether European windstorm still merits "peak" catastrophe status, given every other major peril has breached that threshold in nominal terms over the past two decades, Gallagher Re noted.
Chief science officer Steve Bowen said the post-2008 surge in US SCS losses has been "staggering," but cautioned against attributing it primarily to climate change.
Energy-market swings, social inflation and rapid development in storm-prone corridors are doing the heavier lifting, he said, and underwriting must also reckon with newer exposures such as rooftop solar panels and the growing footprint of data centers.
