Europe’s Storm Dragi-Eberhard Costs Insurers Estimated €740M ($831.8M): PERILS

The initial insured property losses for extratropical cyclone “Dragi-Eberhard,” which hit the British Isles, and Western and Central Europe on March 9-10, 2019, are estimated at €740 million ($831.8 million), according to PERILS, the independent Zurich-based organization that provides industry-wide catastrophe insurance data.

PERILS also announced that extratropical cyclone “Bennet,” which mainly affected France, Germany and Switzerland on March 4, 2019, did not exceed its reporting threshold of €200 million ($224.8 million) and has therefore been categorized as a non-qualifying even for PERILS’ analysis.

The initial loss number for extratropical cyclone Dragi-Eberhard is based on loss data directly collected from affected insurers. In line with the PERILS reporting schedule, an updated estimate of the Dragi-Eberhard market loss will be made available on June 10, 2019, three months after the event end date.

The low-pressure systems associated with the event were named “Dragi” and “Eberhard” by the Free University of Berlin. Dragi was the weaker of the two systems and struck on March 9, 2019. It was immediately followed by Eberhard on March 10, which affected a similar area across the British Isles, France, the Benelux states, Germany and Switzerland. Given this fact, PERILS said, it is not possible in most instances to allocate specific insured losses to either named system and as a result the event loss figure combines losses from both events.

The industry loss from Dragi-Eberhard was by far the largest in an otherwise benign 2018/2019 European winter storm season, said PERILS. For the majority of the individual affected countries, the event loss return period was however not unusual, with the exception of Belgium, where the loss level caused by Dragi-Eberhard is expected to be reached or exceeded once every 10 years.

In total, Dragi-Eberhard resulted in the deaths of three people – two in Germany and one in Belgium, said PERILS. The storm also affected the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, but these countries are not covered by the PERILS loss survey.

Source: PERILS

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Topics Carriers Profit Loss Windstorm Europe Germany