Insurance industry loses $13 bln to disasters in H1

FRANKFURT, July 9 (Reuters) - The insurance industry's bill for losses due to natural catastrophes in the first six months of the year was around $13 billion, above average for the last 10 years, Munich Re (MUVGn.DE) said on Wednesday.

Overall losses, including about $20 billion due to the earthquake in Sichuan, China, were roughly $50 billion, with insured losses coming to about $13 billion, the world's second-biggest reinsurance company after Swiss Re (RUKN.VX) said in a statement.

"In 2007 as a whole, natural catastrophes generated overall losses of $82 billion , of which the insurance industry carried about $30 billion," Munich Re said, noting there were 960 catastrophe events last year.

In giving estimates for overall economic losses and insurance industry losses, Munich Re declined to give an update of its own share of natural catastrophe damage claims so far this year.

The reinsurer told Reuters in late May it expected its share of the damage from the Sichuan earthquake to be in the low to middle tens of millions of euros. [ID:nL28780303]

Some 150,000 people have died in natural catastrophes so far this year, such as the Sichuan earthquake and the cyclone in Myanmar, a higher number of deaths than in the full years since 2004, when a tsunami hit South Asia.

Munich Re said it had analysed about 400 natural catastrophes through June this year, of which 300 were attributable to weather extremes.

"The year is following the long-term trend towards more weather catastrophes, which is influenced by climate change," Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek said in the statement.

The United States was hit by a large number of extreme weather events in the first half of the year, with a record number of tornadoes, heavy rain, hail and flooding in Iowa and other Midwest states.

"The overall loss caused by the floods on the Mississippi and elsewhere is likely to be around $10 billion, with an insured loss in the upper three-digit million dollar range," Munich Re said. (Reporting by Jonathan Gould; editing by Sue Thomas)