How Ontario rains keep adding to claims

Like rainwater spilling through drains, a series of summer rain events continues to feed an ever-deepening pool of insurance claims.

The latest flood Cat stems from heavy rainfall on Aug. 17-18 across southern Ontario and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Those storms racked up $100 million in insured damages, according to initial estimates from Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ).

Added to the $940 million in damages from flash flooding events in July, that brings Ontario’s summer flooding tally to over $1 billion in insured damage from floods, Insurance Bureau of Canada notes in an Oct. 9 press release.

That’s the second-costliest summer for flooding in the province’s history, surpassed only by Toronto’s 2013 floods.

In addition to August’s two days of heavy rainfall and thunderstorms that triggered flood damage in Mississauga, Etobicoke and other parts of the GTA, a tornado was confirmed to have touched down and caused property damage in Ayr, Ont.

“Ontarians have been hit hard by flooding this year, and the damage we’ve seen is unprecedented,” Amanda Dean, IBC’s vice president for Ontario and Atlantic, says in the release. “The emotional distress that this summer’s floods have caused thousands of Ontario residents cannot be overlooked…insurers will continue to support their customers until the very end of the claims process.”

An industry overwhelmed

In terms of total insured losses, Summer 2024 now tops the list of destructive weather seasons in Canada.

That’s had insurers and adjusters, in particular, struggling to tabulate losses and restore customers in the wake of four severe weather events – torrential rainstorms in southern Ontario, wildfires in Jasper, Alta., a hailstorm in Calgary, and flooding in Quebec.

“In only two months, July and August, this summer surpassed the worst year on record and pushed the 2024 year-to-date tally for insured damage to over $7.7 billion,” IBC notes in its press release. “By comparison, insurers paid out an average of $701 million in claims annually for severe weather losses from 2001 to 2010. Insured losses in 2024 are now valued at over 10 times that number.”

Thankfully, current weather reports call for Hurricane Milton, expected to make landfall in Florida today, to move out to sea and miss Canada. But Milton’s arrival comes before residents of Florida’s Gulf Coast have finished cleaning up from late-September’s Hurricane Helene.

Risk mitigaters

The P&C insurance industry has long been an advocate of stormwater infrastructure to ease flood risk, IBC notes in its release.

“Insured losses from catastrophic weather events have been climbing for years, with this summer serving as a stark reminder that Canada has not done enough to prepare,” says Craig Stewart IBC, vice president for climate change and federal issues.

“The federal-provincial debates on how to reduce emissions have overshadowed efforts to coordinate and invest in climate adaptation. Governments must work together to plan a path forward that better protects communities and families across the country, and to avert an insurability crisis as millions of new homes are built.”

Feature image by iStock/shaunl