A study released today shows the September 11th attacks cost an estimated $90 billion - of which $19 billion was insured.
The study, by the Swiss Reinsurance Company, says the US terror attacks have brought this year's global disaster losses to more than $115 billion.
The insurer also reveals over 33,000 people have died as the result of disasters so far in 2001, almost half of those in an earthquake in India.
As a result of the US attacks, 2001 will be the third-largest year for insurance losses since the company started keeping records in 1970.
"At over $115 billion, the economic losses are more than three times the average for the 1990s," said Swiss Re, whose annual studies of the global cost of disasters calculate both the insured losses and the total economic losses.
Swiss Re says the September 11th atrocity represented easily the single largest insurance loss for a man made disaster.
The next most expensive was the explosion on the Piper Alpha drilling platform in the North Sea in 1988, which cost insurance companies $3 billion at 2001 prices.
The biggest ever insurance loss was caused by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which cost the insurance industry $20.2 billion at today's prices.
The next biggest insured losses for 2001 after the attacks were Storm Allison, which hit the United States in June, and flooding, hail and tornadoes in the United States in April, the company reports.
Swiss Re, the world's second-largest reinsurance company, says it expects to pay out around two billion Swiss francs ($1.25 billion) as a result of the September 11th attacks.
PA