The collapse of a major Baltimore bridge and its knock-on effects could result in the biggest-ever marine insurance payout, the chair of insurance giant Lloyd’s of London said on Thursday.
Analysts have forecast that insured losses from the disaster would amount to a figure in the single-digit billions, after a huge cargo ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge on Tuesday. Six people were presumed dead.
“We’re beginning to deploy resources in anticipation of this being a very substantial claim for the industry. And for the Lloyd’s market, it’s going to take some time for for the complexity of the situation to unravel,” Bruce Carnegie-Brown told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
“So, [it’s] very early days to call a number. I don’t at this point anticipate that it’s outside our realistic disaster scenario planning. It feels like a a very substantial loss, potentially the largest-ever marine insured loss, but not outside parameters that we plan for.”
Lloyd’s is one of the world’s biggest reinsurers — businesses that provide financial protection for insurers who cannot handle the scale of losses incurred.
Carnegie-Brown added that, while there would clearly be claims for the ship, cargo and the bridge, it is “second-order impacts” that would become “substantial.”
