Higher premiums are beginning to bite. Ace and Chubb, two of the market’s smaller but significant insurers, have each recorded big recoveries from their losses at the same time last year. Ace said in New York that its third-quarter profit was $503.8 million, up from a $80.8 million loss in the same quarter last year. Not bad on a 4% premium rise to $3.2 billion.

Chubb lost $368.7 million in the third quarter last year – mainly thanks to a savage inccrease in its asbestos claims reserves – but turned it around this time to record a $343.6 million profit.

Californian insurers are expecting claims from last week’s bushfires to cost as much as $1 billion, although it will be several weeks before reliable figures are available. The fires, mainly around San Diego and Los Angeles, killed 13 people and destroyed about 900 homes.

The payout isn’t expected to be as bad for insurers as the 1991 bushfires which struck Oakland and Alameda counties. In those fires some 2900 homes were destroyed at a cost to insurers of $3.19 billion.