Assicurazioni Generali, RSA Insurance Group and XL Group, Bloomber – these are three of several companies who insured Carnival Corp.’s wrecked cruise ship off the coast of Italy, according to the news website Bloomberg.
The companies are facing costs of around 405 million Euro’s (£335 million) from the disaster, with Hannover Re saying they alone will suffer losses in excess of 10 million euros, the website said.
“In terms of physical damage, this will be one of biggest claims around,” Bloomberg quoted Eamonn Flanagan, an insurance analyst at Shore Capital Group in Liverpool as saying. “Quite often with these accidents, the real insurance loss comes if people are injured or killed.”
The Costa Condoria, an Italian cruise ship carrying 4,229 passangers and crew, ran aground last Friday. So far five people are confirmed dead and a further 15 are unaccounted for. The ships captain has been arrested and is accused of manslaughter for causing the wreck and abandoning ship.
The ship cost 450 million euros to build, according to a 2004 press release.
The website reported that Aon Corp. was Carnival Corp.’s insurer but the company declined to comment on the issue.
Bloomberg reported XL as being the lead underwriter of the ship at Lloyd’s of London and that RSA’s losses from the incident are expected to be below 10 million euro’s.
Carnival shares plunged today, sliding 17 percent to 1855 pence as of 8:54 a.m. in London. RSA dropped 0.7 percent to 109.2 pence in London, while Generali dropped 0.8 percent to 11.95 euros in Milan, the website reported.
