Baltimore disaster may be the largest-ever marine insurance payout, Lloyd's boss says

The collapse of a major Baltimore bridge and its knock-on effects could result in the biggest-ever marine insurance payout, the chair of insurance giant Lloyd's of London said on Thursday.

Analysts have forecast that insured losses from the disaster would amount to a figure in the single-digit billions, after a huge cargo ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge on Tuesday. Six people were presumed dead.

"We're beginning to deploy resources in anticipation of this being a very substantial claim for the industry. And for the Lloyd's market, it's going to take some time for for the complexity of the situation to unravel," Bruce Carnegie-Brown told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe."

"So, [it's] very early days to call a number. I don't at this point anticipate that it's outside our realistic disaster scenario planning. It feels like a a very substantial loss, potentially the largest-ever marine insured loss, but not outside parameters that we plan for."

Carnegie-Brown added that, while there would clearly be claims for the ship, cargo and the bridge, it is "second-order impacts" that would become "substantial."

"A lot of business is going to be interrupted, supply chains are going to be interrupted by ships that are both trapped inside the port and of course, ships that were trying to gain access to the port that no longer can, and those second order effects will take some time to work through," he said.

Baltimore is the 11th biggest port in the U.S. and the country's busiest for the import and export of autos and light trucks. Supply chain operators are scrambling to minimize the impact on trade.

Morningstar DBRS analysts said in a Wednesday note that insured losses could total between $2 billion and $4 billion, depending on the