Terrorist attacks top loss list.

• Position: Business Briefs - World Trade Center attacks create largest insured losses for 2001 - Brief Article

Looking back at 2001, it's hardly surprising that the September 11 attacks tower over the rest of the insurance-loss field, creating the largest dollar-volume damage and the largest insured losses of the year. In fact, the devastation represented far and away the largest man-made catastrophe for the insurance industry of all time, according to data from Swiss Reinsurance Co.

At an estimated $19 billion in insured property and business interruption losses, the terrorist attacks created losses more than six times the previous record, the explosion at the Piper Alpha drilling platform in 1988 ($3 billion in current dollars). Overall losses...