Push to extend ‘terror insurance’ after Kenya

The insurance industry hopes the Kenyan mall tragedy will convince Congress to extend🍌 Washington’s 11-year-old “terrorism insurance” program beyond its December 2014 sunset.

The horror of Nairobi “can easily be copycatted here in the United🔯𒁃 States, perhaps not just in one location but in several locations simultaneously,” Robert Hartwig, head of the nonprofit Insurance Information Institute, said this week.

The result of such a horrendous event would be a “large scale loss of confidenceꦺ in the [terrorism insurance] market,” Hartwig added.

President George W. Bush signed the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act into law in 2002 after many insurance companies excluded acts of terror from c𒊎ommercial real estate policies — leaving property owners high and dry.

The law is👍 set to expire at the end of 2014 and an extension of the law has been bottled up in Congress.

Hartwig testified Wednesday before a Senate committee about t﷽he need to extend the law.

The fear stressed in the Senate hearing is that, without the government backstop, price🙈s for terrorism insurance will rise and there will be reduced availability.

That would hit particularly hard the owners of iconic New York skyﷺscrapers and hotel😼s that are logical terrorist targets.

Up until 9/11 almost all major corporations and developers had terrorism ꦅinsuran𒈔ce, but after the attacks — which costs insurers $42 billion in today’s terms — the market for terrorism insurance froze, Hartwig said.

The current law guarantees 85 percent of losses due to terrorisꦺm attacks, w🍌ith insurers picking up the first $100 million.

Wharton Professor Erwann Michel-Kerjan argued that the government would be picking up the bill regardless — as it did when🍸 it footed 88 percent o🎀f Hurricane Sandy’s costs.