Perils introduces new market coverage for European floods

Catastrophe insurance market data provider Perils has expanded its market coverage to include exposure and event loss data for European floods.

Perils will now include industry-wide property sums insured exposed to flood in its database for the United Kingdom, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland.

It’s loss reporting service for Europe will also include both wind and flood events that generate industry losses of €500m (£431m) or higher. Its threshold for industry losses in individual countries, meanwhile, has been increased to €300m (£259m).

The expansion builds on the business’ existing windstorm coverage in Europe.

Perils chief executive Luzi Hitz said: “The inclusion of European flood marks the achievement of another of our targets for 2022, following the addition of wind and flood for Japan in June.

“We thank the European insurance industry for their strong support which has made this possible.

“Access to data on current and past exposures and losses is key to understanding natural catastrophe risk, yet in the past, reliable, consistent loss information has been largely unavailable.

“Since 2009 – through the application of our systematic, ground-up data approach and with the continuous backing of the insurance market – Perils has worked to address this critical data shortfall and we are incredibly proud of the advances we have made during this period.”

Exposure extension

In addition to understanding risk, Perils data can be used for the structuring of triggers for industry loss-based risk transfer products and catastrophe risk model evaluation.

The flood market exposures and event losses are based on data collected directly from participating insurers at Catastrophe Risk Evaluation and Standardising Target Accumulations (CRESTA) zones and property line of business level.

Dalida Bachmann, head of client relationship at Perils, added: “Our decision to adjust the capture threshold reflects the significant growth of insurance exposures in Europe over the last 13 years.

“By setting the threshold at €500m for pan-European events and €300m for individual countries, we believe this achieves the correct balance between ensuring we continue to provide relevant event loss data while also ensuring the reporting requirements for our data providing insurance companies are not overly burdensome.”

• Insurance Times has converted euro amounts into pounds using an exchange rate of £1 = €1.16, which was correct as of 1 September 2022.