Insurers pay record sums for natural damage

Ahr Valley

For the reconstruction in the Ahr valley, the technical relief organization had built a makeshift bridge.

(Photo: imago images / Marc John)

Munich The year 2021 will go down in history as the most expensive year for natural hazards for insurers. The companies paid a total of around 12.5 billion euros to their customers for damage to residential buildings, household items, businesses and vehicles. The industry association GDV announced on Monday.

Above all, the damage after the devastating storm “Bernd” in July and the associated flash floods in parts of Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia caused the damage amount to rise to a record level this year.

So far, the years 2002 with the August flood and 1990 with a series of hurricanes have led the damage statistics. At that time, the insurers paid customers a total of 11.3 and 11.5 billion euros respectively.

For the current year it has meanwhile been shown that the first surveys for the weeks after the flood disaster, which assumed a mid-single-digit billion sum, will be a good twice as high. The long-term average, which is insured losses of around 3.8 billion euros, has thus been exceeded by more than three times.

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In the meantime, it has also become apparent how differently the individual areas were affected. The most expensive damage with around nine billion euros was caused by floods and heavy rain on residential buildings, household items and businesses, around two billion euros was caused by storm and hail damage. The remaining 1.5 billion euros cost the damage to vehicles.

Hailstorms damage many vehicles

Severe hailstorms in parts of Germany caused considerable damage in early summer. “In June, it was mainly motor vehicles that were affected by severe hail damage with a loss of around 700 million euros,” says Jörg Asmussen, General Manager of GDV.

For motor insurers, the year just ended means the fourth largest hail damage since the statistics began. The so-called Munich hail has been a sad record since 1984, when hailstones the size of tennis balls damaged thousands of vehicles. For many years they were still part of the Munich cityscape.

Overall, the damage would have been much more expensive for the insurers this year if all the homeowners, entrepreneurs and vehicle owners concerned had been insured against damage from severe flash floods and floods. In the particularly affected Ahr valley, however, only a little more than a third of the damaged houses were insured against so-called natural hazards.

Numerous initiatives from politics and the insurance industry have been calling for compulsory insurance to cover against natural hazards since the severe damage in the summer. So far, protection against flooding, for example, has only been a voluntary additional component within residential building insurance. Less than half of German homeowners are covered accordingly.

In view of the dangers posed by climate change that have been growing for years, all private residential buildings should in future be protected against extreme weather risks. “Basically, the GDV proposals provide that in future there should only be residential building insurance policies that also cover so-called natural hazards such as floods and heavy rain,” says Jörg Asmussen.

More: Applications for elementary protection are increasing – Justice ministers discuss compulsory insurance

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