Insured Losses From February’s European Windstorms Estimated at €3.7B: PERILS

Insured losses for the European windstorm series, which affected the British Isles and continental Europe in February 2022, are estimated at €3.739 billion (US$3.8 billion), according to PERILS, the independent Zurich-based organization that provides industry-wide catastrophe insurance data.

The windstorm series, which took place on Feb. 16-21, consisted of three storms named Ylenia, Zeynep and Antonia by the Free University of Berlin, and Dudley, Eunice and Franklin by the UK Met Office.

In its third loss estimate for the windstorm series, PERILS said the total industry event loss figure of €3.739 billion, compares to PERILS’ previous loss estimates of €3.610 billion (US$3.7 billion), released on May 20 (three months after the event), and €3.289 billion (US$3.3 billion), released on March 31 (six weeks after the event).

In total, close to 1.9 million individual insurance claims were filed as a result of the windstorm series (which are viewed by PERILS as one event). Losses estimates are based on detailed loss data collected from the majority of affected insurers, said PERILS.

The European windstorm series was driven by a strong jet stream which led to a cluster of three low-pressure systems that hit similar areas within less than a week. The lows generated strong winds across the British Isles and Western Europe causing major disruption and wide-spread damage to insured properties. The strongest impact was from storm Zeynep (Eunice) and the weakest from Antonia (Franklin).

The majority of the losses occurred in Germany, followed by the Benelux states, the United Kingdom and France. Minor losses also occurred in Austria, Switzerland and Denmark. Poland and the Czech Republic were also affected but are not covered in the PERILS loss survey.

PERILS said the storms represent the largest European windstorm loss since Kyrill in January 2007.

Windstorm clustering as observed in February 2022 is not unusual for European extratropical cyclones, said PERILS. The allocation of the resulting losses to individually named storms can, however, be challenging for insurance companies. Moreover, event definitions for reinsurance purposes are not uniform across Europe and may include meteorological conditions as well as loss aggregation periods typically ranging from 72 to 168 hours. Given these factors, the February 2022 European windstorm series is reported by PERILS as a single insurance event.

This third report provides a detailed breakdown of property losses by CRESTA zone for all affected countries, with the data further divided into property lines of business and split into buildings, contents and business interruption losses where available. It is complemented with information on damage degrees which show the damage as a percentage of sums insured, as well as wind-gust data from the German Met Offices and EuroTempest.

In line with the PERILS reporting schedule, an updated estimate of the market loss for the February 2022 windstorm series will be made available on Feb. 21, 2023, 12 months after the event end date.

About PERILS

The PERILS Industry Exposure & Loss Database is available to all interested parties via annual subscription. The database contains industry property sums insured and event loss information on a CRESTA zone level and per property line of business. PERILS industry loss estimates provided via the PERILS Industry Loss Index Service can be used as triggers in insurance risk transactions such as industry loss warranty contracts (ILW) or insurance-linked securities (ILS). The service currently covers the following 18 countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom. In addition, PERILS industry exposure data are available for Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Photograph: Waves crash on the seafront at Blackpool before Storm Dudley hits the north of England and southern Scotland, Wednesday, Feb. 16, 2022. Photo credit: Peter Byrne/PA via AP.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Profit Loss Windstorm Europe