Feb 2022 European windstorm industry loss raised again to €3.85bn by PERILS

The insurance and reinsurance industry loss estimate for the European windstorm series that struck in February of 2022 has been raised again by another 3% to now be finalised at EUR 3.851 billion by data aggregator PERILS AG.

Since the initial loss estimate for these windstorms was released in March 2022, at EUR 3.289 billion, the reported industry loss total has now risen by 17%.

This is now the fourth and final industry loss estimate released by PERILS for the three major European windstorms that struck close together in early 2022.

The storms were named Ylenia, Zeynep and Antonia by the Free University of Berlin, and Dudley, Eunice and Franklin by the UK Met Office and they affected the British Isles and continental Europe between 16th and 21st of February 2022.

Almost 2 million individual insurance claims were filed related to this series of windstorms and at EUR 3.851 billion, the re/insurance industry estimate makes this the largest European windstorm loss since Kyrill in January of 2007.

The first estimate from PERILS placed this market loss at EUR 3.289 billion in March 2022, while the second saw PERILS raising the total almost 10% to EUR 3.61 billion in May, before it was then raised another 4% to EUR 3.739 billion in August.

PERILS previously explained that it was reporting on these three European windstorms as a cluster because of the way event definitions are set for reinsurance purposes in Europe.

These are not uniform and can include meteorological conditions plus loss aggregation periods typically ranging from 72 hours up to 168 hours. As a result, PERILS opted to report on these three windstorms as a single event.

PERILS estimate still remains below where others had estimated the industry loss from these three storms would end up.

It had been estimated the industry loss from these three storms could reach EUR 5 billion by Fitch Ratings, while RMS had said Eunice alone could be as high as EUR 3.5 billion and when combined with Dudley losses could reach EUR 4.5 billion. Verisk pegged just Dudley and Eunice at between EUR 3 to EUR 5 billion.

As a result, PERILS estimate being across three storms does seem a little on the light side still, but to be expected as its coverage will not have captured all of the losses from these windstorm events as they impacted a very wide area of Europe.

PERILS explained that most of the losses from these windstorms occurred in Germany, followed by the Benelux states, the United Kingdom and France, while minor losses occurred in Austria, Switzerland and Denmark.

Poland and the Czech Republic were also affected but these countries are not covered in PERILS loss data collection.

PERILS also explained that, “Based on an actuarial analysis of European windstorm losses since 1979, a loss of this size is reached or exceeded approximately once every eight to nine years.”