Low cats cheer market after 2001 devastation

Hard pressed US insurers recovering from 11 September will be pleased that catastrophic losses in the first quarter were at their lowest level for more than a decade, thanks to an unusually mild winter. Quarterly figures produced by the Property Claim Services (PCS) division of the Insurance Services Office (ISO) put the cat insurance loss at US$580mn. There were just three cats during the period, bringing insurers 240,000 claims.