Swiss Re's sigma 1/2026 puts 2025 APAC insured catastrophe losses at $38 billion against $91 billion in total economic losses. Fifty-eight percent was not covered. That is the protection gap, the share of weather losses no policy pays out on. The Western Pacific typhoon season's official start, June 1, arrived with NOAA's Climate Prediction Center projecting an above-normal season: eighteen to twenty-two named storms, the basin now in neutral-to-warm ENSO conditions after last year's La Nina. Swiss Re's property reinsurance book carried $12.4 billion of APAC catastrophe exposure at year-end 2025, per their annual report. The firm that measures the gap carries $12.4 billion of the exposure it names.

The Philippines sits at the fault line. The government's Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance program, restructured in 2024 with the World Bank's Southeast Asia Disaster Risk Insurance Facility, provides parametric cover (payouts triggered by wind-speed and rainfall thresholds rather than assessed damage) for sovereign assets across eighteen provinces, with a payout ceiling of $500 million. The Philippine Statistics Authority's 2025 household survey puts the share of Filipino families with any property insurance at six percent outside Metro Manila. Typhoon Egay, which made landfall on Luzon in August 2023, caused total losses of $3.1 billion against $310 million in insured recovery. The DRFI program's next renewal window opens in September 2026, and the World Bank's SEADRIF desk will set the premium.