Record insurance costs in 2011

The world’s insurers had to pay out a whopping $105 billion last year, making 2011 the most expensive ever in terms of natural disaster losses, the New York Daily News reports.

According to the figure published by Munich Re, the year was marked by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the New Zealand earthquake, Hurricane Irene in the U.S. and the devastating floods in Thailand.

“Thankfully, a sequence of severe natural catastrophes like last year’s is a very rare occurrence. We had to contend with events with return periods of once every 1,000 years or even higher at the locations concerned,” Torsten Jeworrek of Munich Re said.

The previous record of $101 billion in insured losses was in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina.