In the 15 years since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, partnerships between the public sector and private industries have yielded more effective security and better public awareness about the threat of terrorism. We may never come to terms with the sheer volume of human loss from that day and among the hundreds of attacks that continue every year. But we have achieved greater resilience in the face of the ongoing realities of terrorism – except for when it comes to looking ahead at recovering from the catastrophic costs for rebuilding in its aftermath.
Terrorism insurance is facing a structural crisis: hundreds of terrorist attacks occur annually, but actual insurance payouts have been negligible. The economic costs of terrorism have skyrocketed, but demand for terrorism coverage has remained relatively flat. And despite a proliferation of catastrophe bonds and other forms of alternative capital flooding into the property insurance market, relatively little terrorism risk has been transferred to the capital markets. If terrorism insurance – and the insurers who provide it – are to remain relevant, they must embrace the new tools and data available to them to create more relevant products, more innovative coverages, and new risk transfer mechanisms that address today’s threat landscape.
The September 11th, 2001 attacks rank among the largest insurance losses in history at $44 billion, putting it among catastrophes with severe losses such as Hurricane Katrina ($70 billion), the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami ($38 billion), and Hurricane Andrew ($25 billion).
But unlike natural catastrophes, whose damages span hundreds of kilometers, most of the 9/11 damages in New York were concentrated in an area of just 16 acres. Such extreme concentration of loss caused a crisis in the insurance marketplace and highlighted the difficulty of insuring against such a peril.
Following the events of the September 11 attacks, most insurers subsequently excluded terrorism from their policies, forcing the U.S. government to step in and provide a backstop through the Terrorism Risk and Insurance Act (2002). Terrorism insurance has become cost effective as insurer capacity for terrorism risk increased. Today there are an estimated 40 insurers providing it on a stand-alone basis, and it is bundled with standard property insurance contracts by many others.
But despite better data on threat groups, more sophisticated terrorism modeling tools, and increased transparency into the counter-terrorism environment, terrorism insurance hasn’t changed all that much in the past 15 years. The contractual coverage is the same – usually distinguishing between conventional and CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear) attacks. And terrorism insurance take-up remains minimal where attacks occur most frequently, in the middle east and Africa, highlighting what policymakers refer to as an increasing “protection gap.”
Closing this gap – through new products, coverages, and risk transfer schemes – will enable greater resilience following an attack and promote a more comprehensive understanding of the global terrorism risk landscape.
