Bermuda-based Platinum Underwriters Holdings, Ltd. yesterday estimated that it could face between $25 million and $40 million in after-tax losses from Hurricane Frances, which hit the Bahamas and Florida last week.

Platinum, the first Bermuda-based reinsurer to issue an estimate for Frances, said

?very few? of its clients had reported actual losses under its reinsurance treaties yet.?Consequently the estimates are based on the output of commercial and proprietary catastrophe models as well as consideration of total industry loss estimates that vary widely up to $9 billion,? Platinum said.

?Based on the current industry environment, the mix of business underwritten and normal catastrophe losses for the remainder of this year, the company expects that its 2004 earnings per diluted common share will be approximately $3, based on an estimate of 51 million diluted shares.? Platinum made the announcement as reinsurers girded for claims from Hurricane Ivan, which pummelled the Caribbean over the weekend causing 68 deaths and is expected to make landfall in the US on Thursday.

However, two Bermuda-based reinsurance company chiefs pointed out on Friday that the spate of hurricanes in Florida this year can be a financial blessing for reinsurers in the long term. ?The value of the risk business goes up with events like these,? said Brian O?Hara, chief executive officer of XL Capital. ?It?s perverse.?

Ivan may halt a decline in property reinsurance prices if its insured losses exceed $10 billion, said Albert Benchimol, chief financial officer of PartnerRe. Greater damage may give reinsurers the ability to raise prices.

?If you can survive a crisis event, you?re going to make your money back,? Benchimol told investors at a New York conference yesterday. ?It?s a positive.?

Bloomberg News reported that insurers already face between $10 billion and $13 billion in damage claims from Hurricane Frances and Hurricane Charley, which cut crisscrossing swaths across central Florida within three weeks of each other.

Neither storm struck a city as large as Tampa, a metropolitan area with 15 percent of the state?s $2 trillion in insured properties, according to Risk Management Solutions Inc., a storm modeller that helps insurers select risks that won?t bankrupt them when catastrophes happen. The storms come amid a 15 percent decline in commercial property prices charged this year by New York-based American International Group Inc., the world?s largest insurer. The drop, accompanied by a decline in reinsurance prices, threatened to slow profit growth at American International and its competitors.