The event caused the single largest insurance loss recorded so far, costing more than $40bn in six states.

Lloyd's said the losses from the hurricane were likely to reach $3 billion, making it the largest insurance loss ever.

Q. Have insurance losses been increasing in the 1990's?

The Legislature promises to repay money to meet insurance losses.

So now you can pay off your Lloyd's insurance losses.

Even the larger insurance loss, he said, "is a positive sign, because it represents the settlement of what could have been a bigger liability."

The high interest rates and unemployment in the early 1980s brought insurance losses.

In the United States, insurance losses have also greatly increased.

One approach, he said, would be to give everyone with unpaid insurance losses a payment of $500 or so.

The unit had been consistently profitable until last year, when it wrote off $433 million in insurance losses and posted a loss.