Though recovery and rebuilding efforts in the Northeast following Superstorm Sandy are far from complete, observers and experts said Tuesday that property/casualty insurers' response to the storm has been largely positive.

During a panel discussion at the 2013 Property/Casualty Joint Industry Forum in New York, experts said the industry has been largely successful in its efforts to process and manage the estimated 1.4 million claims filed by residential and commercial policyholders in the aftermath of the storm.

“We saw claims coming in very fast after Sandy, far faster, really, than we had following any other storm in memory. That meant that we had to have our people and our technology in place very quickly,” said Jeffrey Bowman, president and CEO of Atlanta-based claims manager Crawford & Co. Mr. Bowman said his company alone fielded more than 40,000 claims related to the October superstorm, and had closed approximately 70% by year's end.

“With any event like this, it's about the personnel you put on the ground, the systems you set up and the planning you're able to do in advance with your clients,” Mr. Bowman said. “With Sandy, we were dealing with 16 states that were impacted, and we had close to 600 adjusters working with insurers to process claims.”

From a financial viewpoint, panelists said insurers seem to have withstood the estimated $25 billion in insured losses caused by the storm, thanks in large part to diversification strategies among the industry's biggest firms.

“When you look at the spread of losses related to Sandy, it’s surprising to see that there isn’t really any one company that appears to be having an issue with concentration in the region,” said Matthew Mosher, senior vice president and chief rating officer at Oldwick, N.J.-based A.M. Best Co. Inc. “For the most part, we’re not seeing a lot of rating movement because most companies managed this event fairly well and were able to diversify themselves enough that the storm didn’t have any major impact on their financial strength.”

Panelists said that while how the property/casualty industry responds to Sandy in the longer term remains to be seen, adjustments to pricing, policy limits and deductibles for damage caused by named storms are likely to occur, especially in the Northeast region.

“It was a wake-up call for the industry in terms of what could have been,” said Vincent J. Dowling, co-founder and managing partner of the Farmington, Conn.-based investment brokerage Dowling & Partners Securities L.L.C. “It highlights the issue that the whole industry is trying to deal with, which is determining what the ‘new normal’ is going to be in terms of catastrophe losses.”