Potential losses from collapsed Australian insurer HIH could reach AUS$5.3bn (£1.9bn), according to liquidators.
The company handling Australia's biggest corporate collapse, KPMG, has admitted previous estimates of AUS$4bn (£1.5bn) may have been too low.
KPMG also warned it would take at least a year before it could reliably estimate how much creditors would receive and that it could be up to a decade before all payments were made.
The Sydney-based company was formally placed in liquidation yesterday after being in provisional liquidation since March.
This week, the Policyholders' Protection Board (PPB) confirmed that it had made a number of payouts to creditors of HIH's Lloyd's syndicates, HIH Cotesworth 535 and 1688.
Within Australia, the federal and state governments are the biggest creditors following their decision to fund a AUS$640m (£236m) bail-out providing immediate relief to victims.
