NEW YORK (Bloomberg) New Zealand’s deadliest earthquake in eight decades, which toppled buildings and trapped workers in Christchurch, the country’s second-largest city, may lead to higher prices for reinsurance in the Asia-Pacific region.Bermuda is a global centre in the property and catastrophe reinsurance business and many of the Island’s companies will be paying out on claims from the quake, which caused terrible damage and killed at least 71 people in Christchurch on Tuesday.Rates may climb as major reinsurers take losses, compounding costs from last month’s flooding in Queensland, Australia, Credit Suisse Group AG wrote in a note to clients on Monday. Reinsurance rates in other regions probably won’t be affected, Credit Suisse said.“Losses are building in the reinsurance industry in the first quarter,” Credit Suisse wrote in the note. “With continued high levels of excess capital in the global reinsurance industry, the losses suffered to date are unlikely to be sufficient to cause a turn in global pricing, although we would expect pricing in the Asia-Pacific region to increase.”About 300 remain missing after the 6.3-magnitude quake, Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker told reporters. The quake and more than 30 aftershocks have toppled buildings in Christchurch’s central business district. The city’s tallest building, the Grand Chancellor Hotel, is unstable and may be moving, police said.Reinsurers sell coverage to providers of primary insurance such as Allianz SE and American International Group Inc. to help protect against the cost of major claims. Reinsurance prices on policies renewed January 1 worldwide declined 7.5 percent, according to the Guy Carpenter Global Property Catastrophe Rate on Line Index. Rates fell six percent a year earlier.A “sustained turn” in the market may follow a disaster or series of catastrophes causing more than $100 billion of insured losses, David Flandro, global head of business intelligence at Guy Carpenter & Co, said in an interview. Guy Carpenter is the reinsurance brokerage of Marsh & McLennan Cos.The Christchurch quake may cost insurers $3.5 billion to $8 billion, catastrophe modeller AIR Worldwide said in an e-mailed statement. JPMorgan Chase & Co estimated insured losses of as much as $12 billion, double the losses from a 7.0-magnitude temblor that struck Christchurch in September. Last month’s flooding in Australia may cost as much as $4 billion, according to AIR.The reinsurance industry typically absorbs about $30 billion in annual losses from catastrophes, said Mark Dwelle, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets.“The glass starts the year full, and it’s already a third gone,” he said in an interview. “Every event that drinks it down, the sooner you get to the bottom.”A $12 billion loss from this week’s earthquake would make it the seventh-most costly natural disaster for insurers since 1970, according to the Insurance Information Institute, a New York-based trade group.The most expensive catastrophe was 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which cost insurers $71.2 billion.