, Columnist
Japan's Insurers Will Withstand This Shock
They're in a stronger financial position than peers in South Korea, Canada, the U.S. or China.
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Tuesday's magnitude-7.4 earthquake off the coast of Japan's Fukushima prefecture could hardly have come at a worse time for the nation's insurers.
April's Kumamoto tremor is already the country's second-most costly on record. Some 329 billion yen ($3 billion) in claims had been paid by late June, a figure likely to rise further as more cases are resolved. Such disasters have a long tail of costs: Five years after the country's most expensive temblor, Japan Earthquake Reinsurance Co. paid some 5.25 billion yen of claims last fiscal year related to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake.