(Details §1, read “Lloyd’s §7 and 9)

LONDON (Reuters) – The collapse of the Baltimore bridge could cost reinsurers several billion dollars, Bruce Carnegie-Brown, the chairman of Lloyd’s of London, the London insurance and reinsurance market, said on Thursday.

The Dali, a Singapore-flagged container ship, was leaving the port of Baltimore in Maryland when it struck a bridge pier.

The impact caused most of the bridge to fall into the Patapsco River, blocking shipping lanes and forcing the indefinite closure of the Port of Baltimore, one of the busiest on the US East Coast. .

“It’s too early to put a number on the total insurance loss,” Bruce Carnegie-Brown told Reuters, saying he would be “very surprised” if the event did not result in a loss of billions of dollars. . This “tragedy has the potential to become the largest marine insurance loss on record.”

The previous record was the disaster of the luxury cruise liner Costa Concordia in 2012.

According to Morningstar DBRS analysts, the tragedy could result in up to $4 billion (€3.71 billion) in insurance claims.

Lloyd’s, with more than 50 member companies, is active in the marine and property insurance markets. In 2022, it recorded gross premiums of more than 6 billion pounds (7.01 billion euros) in maritime, aviation and transport insurance and reinsurance. North America is its largest market.

Bruce Carnegie-Brown also added that the insurer had set aside £1.6 billion in reserves over the past two years for planes stranded in Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

Earlier today, Lloyd’s reported a pre-tax profit of £10.7 billion for 2023.

(Reporting Carolyn Cohn; Lina Golovnya, editing by Kate Entringer)

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