PERILS estimates €1.89bn industry loss for September Central Europe floods

Zurich-based catastrophe insurance data provider PERILS AG has released its initial industry loss estimate for the floods in Central Europe and Italy during the period of 14 to 20 September 2024, pegging the total at €1.886 billion.

As a reminder, the low-pressure system Boris (also known as Anett) caused prolonged heavy rainfall over a very wide area in Central Europe in mid-September, leading to flooding in the Danube, Elbe, Oder, and Vistula river basins. According to PERILS, most of the losses occurred in Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland – which comprise approximately 95% of the industry loss – followed by Italy and Slovakia.

Hungary and Romania were also affected but to a much lesser degree. In total, an estimated 30,000 people were evacuated and 28 people died due to the floods.

Christoph Oehy, CEO of PERILS, commented, “This large-scale European flood event caused extensive damage over a considerable area.

“However, the combination of early flood warnings and active flood management before and during the event, coupled with other loss prevention measures implemented since other major floods in Europe, including in 1997, 2002, and 2013, helped to avoid an even worse catastrophe.”

PERILS has also announced that it will integrate its CRESTA CLIX industry loss reporting service into its current product offering as of 1 January 2025.

“The initial industry loss report for the September 2024 Central Europe Floods has been produced by combining these two methodologies to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach,” the catastrophe insurance data provider said.

Oehy continued, “PERILS has used this event to illustrate how the forthcoming integration of the CRESTA CLIX methodology into PERILS will work.

“It is an early example of how PERILS will report on events as of 1 January 2025 and demonstrates the benefits of being able to provide more comprehensive industry event loss data from a single source for the re/insurance sector.”

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