Marking the 34th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew's landfall, David Delaney, President & CEO of Insight Analytics, published a Viewpoint essay in Insurance Journal revisiting the storm that reshaped the property insurance industry — and asking what a repeat of Andrew would cost the much larger, much more valuable South Florida of today.
Highlights from the Essay
Andrew created modern catastrophe modeling
The 1992 Category 5 storm caused roughly $15.5 billion in insured losses and pushed at least a dozen carriers into insolvency, exposing how little the industry understood about the risk it carried. In the aftermath, probabilistic catastrophe modeling went from a niche idea to an industry standard.
A repeat today would cost far more
Florida's population has grown roughly 72% since 1992, and Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties now hold an estimated $1.2 trillion in property. On the same track, modelers now estimate a modern Andrew would cause $70–100 billion in insured losses — and a direct hit on Miami could exceed $200 billion.
Four lessons for underwriting today
Delaney draws four takeaways for modern catastrophe analytics: exposure data quality is foundational, accumulation risk is often invisible until it isn't, pricing to the average ignores a growing tail, and model output only matters once it's translated into underwriting appetite and portfolio limits before risk is bound.
Treat the anniversary as a stress test
Delaney's closing argument: rather than filing Andrew under history, carriers should use the anniversary to honestly ask whether today's book could absorb a storm the industry already knows how to describe.
About the Author
David Delaney is President & CEO of Insight Analytics, bringing more than 25 years of experience across insurance, reinsurance, catastrophe modeling, and enterprise technology, including senior roles at AIG, Kingstone Insurance, Gallagher Re, and RMS (now part of Moody's).
Read the Full Essay on Insurance Journal →Tags: Catastrophe Modeling · Hurricane Andrew · Hurricanes · Natural Catastrophes
