South Carolina flooding caused $350 million in insured losses

A truck rests off a washed out road outside of Columbia, S.C. after a week of steady rain in early October./ AP

Flooding in South Carolina during October caused approximately $350 million in insured losses thus far, according to a new report from Aon Benfield Group Ltd., the company said Thursday.

The company's “Global Catastrophe Recap” for October says that insurers “preliminarily” reported some $350 million in claims related to the flooding in South Carolina the first week in October.

Additional insured losses through the federal National Flood Insurance Program and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Risk Management Agency should be about $100 million, the report said.

Although Hurricane Joaquin lashed Bermuda Oct. 1 and 2, insured losses are estimated by the Bahamian insurance industry to not exceed $50 million, the report said.

Tens of millions of dollars in insured losses were said to have been caused by a deep low pressure system bringing destructive winds to portions of Canada's Prairie Provinces on Oct. 11 and 12 in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, according to the report.

Hurricane Patricia, which became the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere when its maximum sustained wind speeds reached 200 mph and its central pressure plummeted to 879 millibars, according to the report, caused little insured damage.

“Given low insurance penetration in the hardest-hit areas, insured losses were expected to be negligible,” said the Aon Benfield report.