Lloyd's List said that London will bear a large part of the eventual insurance burden of the tsunami tragedy.
While life and property in most of the affected nations are lightly insured, and the marine loss looks likely to be fairly small, much of the exposure is reinsured into the Lloyd's and European markets, said the article printed on December 20, 2004.
The article said that brokers and underwriters in London reported very little notice of claim arriving on their desks, although the volume of casualty will almost certainly rise as adjusters file their assessments.
In India, where the insurance sector has been pushing for increased share after years of state control, most risks still have to be reinsured 20% to the giant General Insurance Corp of India, and much of the rest is ceded to London and the big reinsurers. GIC itself has a programme of reinsurance at Lloyd's and elsewhere, said the publication.
Analysts continued to forecast the insurance loss would be easily tolerable across the market, it added.
While around 10 ships were believed damaged in port in India, mainly in Calcutta and Chennai, and a ship damaged in drydock in Colombo, the physical impact on bluewater hulls generally was small considering the human scale of the disaster.
In Chennai, an unnamed Greek controlled ship was reported to have been pushed into the quayside by an Indian ship which broke its moorings.
Claims for cargo damage are likely to materialise as containers are counted and examined. Infrastructure is reported to be intact at most or all of the big ports said the magazine.
