Typhoon Haiyan, which slammed into the Phillipines late in the year was "probably the strongest tropical storm ever to make landfall," the report said. More than 6,000 people were killed in the storm, and millions were left homeless.
Overall, the financial toll of Haiyan is believed to be around $10 billion, about five per cent of the country's GDP. But insured losses from the storm will end up being far smaller, probably in the hundreds of millions of dollars, Munich Re said.
The second largest single event was mudslides in India in June, which killed 5,500 people.The Atlantic storm season typically results in the insurance industry's biggest losses for the year, but last year's hurricane season was one of the quietest in the last 20 years with the fewest hurricanes since 1982.