Global insured losses from natural catastrophes reached US$92 billion in the first nine months of 2026, according to Gallagher Re’s Q3 2026 Natural Catastrophe and Climate Report. That figure is 29% below the 10-year average and the lowest year-to-date insured total since 2019. The more consequential number, however, is six. The industry has now gone six consecutive quarters without a single natural catastrophe generating more than US$10 billion in insured losses, the longest such run in decades. Since 2022, only five events globally have cleared that threshold, compared with 13 between 2017 and 2021.
Losses were subdued not because fewer events occurred, but because no single event concentrated losses at scale. Some 54 billion-dollar economic loss events materialized through September, slightly above the 10-year average of 52. Frequency was near-normal. Severity was not.
The absence of major peak-loss events fed into reinsurance capital. Total dedicated reinsurance capital reached a record US$688 billion at mid-year 2026, and the sector generated a 19.9% return on equity in H1, the second-highest half-year result of the past decade. Reinsurers enter the January 2027 renewal season in one of their strongest financial positions on record, with property catastrophe rates having declined approximately 16% at the July 2026 midyear renewals following five consecutive quarters of below-average losses.
Severe convective storm (SCS) activity accounted for nearly 60% of all global insured catastrophe losses through Q3 2026. That proportion reflects both the peril’s growing dominance and the absence of competing peak-zone events. In the US, insurers absorbed at least US$43 billion in SCS losses through September, marking the fourth consecutive calendar year in which the annual insured SCS total exceeded US$40 billion. The total economic cost, including uninsured losses, exceeded US$57 billion.
Illinois alone recorded a preliminary state-record 211 tornado touchdowns through September. The costliest outbreak, a sequence spanning April 22 to May 1, produced at least 112 confirmed tornado touchdowns and exceeded US$6 billion in insured losses, the sixth-costliest US SCS event on record even when adjusted for today’s dollars.
In Europe, SCS insured losses exceeded US$9 billion through Q3, led by a late-August outbreak across France, Switzerland, and Italy that generated more than US$3.8 billion in industry losses that included hailstones exceeding four inches in diameter in parts of northern Italy.
The accumulation of SCS losses across calendar years carries structural implications for reinsurance programs. As noted in earlier analysis, any multi-billion-dollar US severe weather event can erode deductible layers beneath aggregate attachment points. Moody’s Ratings has also indicated that reinsurers are likely to maintain elevated attachment points, meaning insurers will continue to retain a large share of secondary-peril losses. The trajectory suggests that the peril’s cost to the industry is structural rather than cyclical.
NOAA puts the probability of El Niño maintaining “very strong” status into January 2027 at greater than 81%, with the event carrying what NOAA describes as a very real chance of ranking among the strongest El Niño phases in 1,000 years., according to the Gallagher Re report. The current cycle emerged in June 2026 and has already driven suppressed Atlantic hurricane activity, contributing to the benign loss experience of the past six quarters, while amplifying Pacific tropical cyclone risk and fueling drought conditions across Europe, North America, and parts of Asia.
Gallagher Re’s proprietary catastrophe database, covering weather- and climate-related losses from 1980 to 2025, found that La Niña years averaged 119% higher economic losses and 200% higher insured losses than El Niño years in Atlantic and western Pacific tropical cyclone activity. The firm notes the analysis is descriptive rather than deterministic, and that small sample sizes in the strongest ENSO phases mean individual high-loss events can skew the averages materially. Per-month insured losses during “very strong” or “strong” La Niña phases ran approximately US$20.7 billion, compared with US$12.9 billion during equivalent El Niño phases. A transition to La Niña in 2027 is currently projected, though not guaranteed.
The benign loss environment that has supported pricing softness and record capital accumulation has also coincided with one of the strongest El Niño suppressors of Atlantic hurricane activity on record. The record-intensity El Niño has arrived as reinsurance pricing has fallen to multi-year lows, a combination the market has not previously had to navigate.
Gallagher Re put Venezuela’s June earthquake doublet at approximately US$25 billion in economic losses, averaging United Nations and World Bank estimates, while Colombia’s August earthquake carried an economic loss of US$13 billion, equivalent to roughly 2.3% of the country’s 2026 GDP according to the firm. Together, they produced combined insured losses of just US$3 billion.In both cases, insurance covered only a small fraction of economic losses. Many of 2026’s most destructive disasters struck regions where insurance penetration is limited, leaving reconstruction costs with governments and households rather than with the private sector.
Steve Bowen, chief science officer at Gallagher Re, said the pattern illustrates how catastrophe activity and catastrophe losses can diverge significantly. “The world has still experienced a sizeable number of significant disasters in 2026, but relatively few have occurred in locations or under circumstances that generated outsized insured losses,” he said. “Many of the costliest events instead produced substantial economic, humanitarian, and societal impacts, with much of the recovery ultimately falling on governments, businesses, and affected communities.”
As the industry approaches January 2027 renewals from a position of substantial capital strength, the Gallagher Re report flags that this strength should not be read as a signal that elevated loss periods are behind it. The underlying drivers of catastrophe risk, including inflation, exposure growth, and climate change, continue to push loss costs upward. And the transition out of El Niño is a reminder, as Bowen put it, of “how quickly the catastrophe landscape can shift from one year to the next.”
