Flood drives 78% of $18.2bn major non-US international cat losses in 2024: CRESTA
The CRESTA organisation, which tracks catastrophe events outside the United States that have generated insurance industry losses of over US $1 billion, has reported the 2024 annual total as reaching US $18.2 billion, of which 78% came from flood events.
Aggregate insured losses from non-US catastrophe loss events came in slightly below the long-term average of $19.9 billion, CRESTA explained.
The organisation calls 2024 “the year of the floods”, where as the prior year was characterised by losses from severe convective storms.
“Both perils are affected by the warming climate, with more energy and moisture in the atmosphere creating the potential for more extreme weather events,” CRESTA said today.
Over the course of 2024, CRESTA counted eight international (non-US) catastrophe events with industry losses in excess of US $1 billion.
These international non-US insured catastrophe loss events were:
Noto Earthquake, Japan, Jan 2024
Dubai Floods, Apr 2024
Rio Grande do Sul Floods, Brazil, Apr-May 2024
Southern Germany Floods, May-Jun 2024
Calgary Hailstorm, Canada, Aug 2024
Ex-Hurricane Debby Floods, Canada, Aug 2024
Central Europe Floods, Sept 2024
Valencia Floods, Spain, Oct 2024
You can see the size of these loss events in the chart from CRESTA below:
As the chart above shows, a significant proportion of the 2024 international major catastrophe insured losses came from the peril of flood.
CRESTA said flooding amounted to 78% of the $18.2 billion total for the year.
The largest event of the year was the Valencia flooding in Spain, which CRESTA estimates at US $3.9 billion, making it the highest catastrophe loss on record for the Spanish insurance market.
However, the vast majority of the losses are covered by the “Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros”, the compulsory government scheme for natural catastrophe insurance in Spain, CRESTA said.
CRESTA provided a useful chart showing the flood contribution to 2024 losses versus other years, finding other years with significant flood loss contributions to the total were in 2001, 2011 and 2021.
Given there were a significant number of major flood catastrophe insured loss events in 2024, the average was actually a little lower when indexed by five year periods. But the annual frequency for the 2020 to 2024 period was far higher.
In addition to the eight non-US events currently measured as having caused more than US $1 billion in insurance market losses, CRESTA noted that two additional international catastrophe loss events, the Hyôgo Hailstorms in Japan in April, and Typhoon Yagi in China and Vietnam in September, remain marginally below the USD 1bn threshold at this time, so the total for the year could rise if losses creep higher for these.
