AT A TIME WHEN Barbadians are grappling with price increases there is one expense that they do not have to think about, at least for the time being – higher insurance costs as a result of natural disasters in the United States over the last couple of months.

Insurance executives Peter Harris and Paul Inniss, managing director of Consumers' Guarantee Insurance (CGI) and chief operating officer of Island Heritage Insurance Company Limited, respectively, did not expect the natural disasters in the United States to impact their reinsurance costs.

Inniss told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY on Thursday that it was too early to say how reinsurance costs would be affected and the impact would not be known until after the 2008 hurricane season.

"Given the significance of loss and the nature of the catastrophes, it is too early and we would only know in the last quarter of the year," said Inniss, who is also president of the General Insurance Association of Barbados.

Meantime, Harris said, the region's reinsurance costs would only be impacted if there was an increase in disasters in South America, Asia, Latin America and Florida. (JW)