NEW YORK — While property/ casualty insurers' short-term responses to Superstorm Sandy have been marked by financial resiliency and generally efficient claims management, experts acknowledged long-term changes are needed to protect the industry from future catastrophes.

During panel discussions at the 2013 Property/Casualty Joint Industry Forum in New York this month, experts credited the pre-emptive dispersal of personnel and resources to affected areas for the industry's relative success in managing the estimated 1.4 million claims filed by residential and commercial policyholders in the days and weeks after Sandy.

“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,” said Jeffrey Bowman, president and CEO of Atlanta-based Crawford & Co., at the conference. Mr. Bowman added that Crawford & Co. had closed as many as 70% of the more than 40,000 Sandy-related claims it had received as of Dec. 31.

“With Sandy, we were dealing with 16 states that were impacted, and we had close to 600 adjusters working with insurers to process claims,” he said.

Financially speaking, panelists said property/casualty 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. As of Sept. 30, 2012 — a month prior to the storm's landfall in New York and New Jersey — the industry had amassed a $583.5 billion policyholder surplus, according to the Insurance Information Institute 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,” said Matthew Mosher, senior vice president and chief rating officer at New York-based A.M. Best Co. Inc.

How the property/casualty industry responds to Sandy in the longer term remains to be seen. Panelists said Sandy's pummeling of the Northeast region exposed a stark need among insurers and their clients to adapt their catastrophe risk management strategies.

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Adjustments to pricing, policy limits and deductibles for damage caused by named storms are likely to occur, panelists said. Additionally, greater attention should be paid to the concentration and interconnectivity of catastrophe risk in densely populated areas, risk management and insurance education for policyholders and the implementation of risk mitigation measures in order to stem the rising tide of catastrophe losses in the U.S. and worldwide.

Although it was not as powerful as recent hurricanes — Sandy was below the threshold of hurricane strength when it made landfall — the storm was among the costliest in U.S. history, due in large part to the region's high concentration of residents and businesses.

“The exposures in these very densely populated areas are going to need to be rethought,” said Michael McGavick, CEO of XL Group P.L.C. “I think when you have that much interconnectivity of risk on both the commercial side and the personal lines side, it's something that our industry is really going to have to think hard about, because that density problem is only going to get worse.”

The region's density also has added layers of complexity to business interruption claims resulting from the storm, as well as exposed an overall lack of risk and coverage comprehension among business owners seeking to recover lost income, panelists said.

“Particularly in an area of such great density, the impact on small and midsized businesses was pretty pronounced, and many of these business owners had little to no comprehension about whether or not they were covered,” said Liam McGee, chairman and CEO of Hartford, Conn.-based The Hartford Financial Services Group Inc.

Not all of the potential solutions lie within the purview of the insurance industry, panelists said. Legislators and administrators at all levels of government can help reduce the risk of catastrophe losses by adopting and implementing policies designed to fortify properties against wind damage and water infiltration.

Approximately 228 people attended this year's Property/ Casualty Joint Industry Forum on Jan. 15. Next year's Forum will be held Jan. 14, 2014, in New York.