Many current insurance industry reports, including Crawford’s large loss claims review and outlook report, indicate that climate- and extreme weather-related events are increasing in frequency and intensity around the globe – and Asia is particularly well known as being prone to tropical storms, cyclones, typhoons and earthquakes.
The region is also home to banking, financial trading, gaming, semiconductor and many other high-tech manufacturers as well as numerous luxury hospitality and resort venues. When disasters impact areas where these industries are concentrated, there’s scope for business interruption claims as well as repair and restoration. But materials inflation, often over-stretched supply chains and changing regulatory requirements can all combine to drive up claim value and extend claim life – leading to unwelcome loss of revenue, especially for the hospitality sector.
These industries often also operate in multiple countries – and major natural events show no respect for borders. This can present the additional complications of dealing with claims that cross into multiple territories and so become subject to different administrations and legislation, let alone different languages and cultures.
But it’s not just the leisure and manufacturing sectors that can find themselves at the mercy of natural disasters. Over the past two decades more buildings have been constructed in previously undeveloped areas, so the combination of higher-intensity storms plus the ever-growing density of insurable properties is also driving the overall increase in claims.
“There is potential across Asia for large claims with a lot of moving parts and which take a lot of technical understanding,” says Scott Reichelt.
“With its established reach across the region underpinned by the ability to call on its wider global resources to scale up at speed when needed, Crawford Asia can without doubt meet all and any claims challenges presented by large-scale events.”
Scott explains that throughout 2025 he’s been growing Crawford’s large and complex loss team in Asia by strengthening and deepening its technical expertise. “Our focus hasn’t been on training insurance people to be experts in high-tech industries. Instead, we’ve been teaching insurance principles to expert engineers. They can then speak intuitively with clients on a peer-to-peer level about technical issues to enhance customer engagement, leading to better understanding of the loss and elevating our quality of service.”
In July 2025, Scott’s leadership team was further strengthened by the appointment of Tony Chapman as head of Crawford Global Technical Services (GTS), Asia. Based in Singapore, Tony will oversee complex loss-adjusting activities throughout the region as well as coordinating global assignments originating from Asia-based reinsurers.
Scott summarises:
“Tony’s appointment is another key component in our ongoing commitment to build approachable and relatable market-leading technical expertise across Asia and to support the region as a centre of excellence. As major events become more frequent and bring newer and different challenges, Crawford Asia will continue to grow to meet them.”
