Devastating earthquakes in New Zealand, Japan, Chile and Haiti in the past two years have given insurers and catastrophe modellers greater insight into seismic risk – but the industry has yet to implement many of the lessons.

Swiss Re Head of Earthquake Balz Grollimund says the escalating cost of claims from Christchurch will be repeated if a disaster strikes another major city but not enough is being done to factor increased knowledge into risk analysis.

“In Christchurch, every building in the central business district has to be taken down piece by piece so there has been hardly any reconstruction since February 2011,” Dr Grollimund said during a visit to Sydney last week.

“Most of the time spent has gone into taking buildings down before the rebuild can start, and that costs a lot of money.”

Loss of access to the CBD, loss of customers and interaction between the Earthquake Commission and private insurers prolonging claims settlements have also raised the cost of the disaster.

“This is not just a Christchurch issue,” Dr Grollimund told insuranceNEWS.com.au. “It will be exactly the same in any other city around the world in markets where there is a very large take-up rate of insurance, such as in New Zealand and Australia.

“The claims picture will unfold in a similar way.”

He says New Zealand earthquake models were accurate in estimating how buildings would respond to shaking but did not account for liquefaction, and most modellers have since done considerable work on the impact of soil becoming waterlogged.

Last year’s Japan earthquake showed catastrophe models also anticipated shaking damage but did not consider tsunami risk.

Dr Grollimund says Swiss Re’s 40-strong catastrophe perils team has rebuilt the company’s Japan model and is analysing claims data from recent major quakes “to learn as much as we can” and apply it to risk analysis.