Moody's has announced that it does not anticipate taking extensive rating actions on property and casualty insurers despite the effects of Hurricane Katrina.
The group's senior analyst, Jeffrey Berg, said: “We do not anticipate widespread rating downgrades for a number of reasons" – one being that most rated insurers are associated with reasonably large insurance groups with capitalisation sufficient to effectively absorb their share of even a $25bn industry event.
The firm also said the scope of damage to automobiles caused by Katrina is likely to be far greater than in a typical hurricane due to the immense amount of flooding that it created.