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The insurance and reinsurance industry loss estimate for European extratropical windstorm Ciarán from November 2023 has now been finalised slightly higher at €2.067 billion by PERILS.
Windstorm Ciarán (also named Emir) impacted France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands between November 1st and 2nd 2023 and saw some of the strongest wind gusts experienced in Europe for years.
It continues to represent the most significant insurance market loss caused by a European windstorm event, rather than a cluster, since Kyrill in 2007.
Losses that flowed to the insurance and reinsurance industry are said to have been typical for a European windstorm, with a large number of smaller claims, mostly from non-structural property damage, adding up to a relatively significant total
The storm had ramifications in the catastrophe bond market, with one transaction sponsored by Covéa Group marked down and expected to face a loss due to Windstorm Ciarán.
In its initial estimate, PERILS pegged the insurance market loss from the windstorm at just under €1.89 billion.
Then, PERILS updated its estimate and increased the total by nearly 3% to just under €1.94 billion.
Six months after the windstorm impacted Europe, PERILS updated the total again, lifting the insurance market loss estimate by 5.5% to $2.043 billion, which is approaching US $2.2 billion.
Now, a final update from PERILS has raised and finalised the industry loss from windstorm Ciaran to €2.067 billion, so just a slight increase.
The industry loss estimate from this windstorm is solely based on the property line of business and gathered through loss data collected from the affected insurers.
The majority of the insurance industry loss came from damage to properties in France, at EUR 1.772 billion, followed by the United Kingdom (with the Channel Islands particularly affected), Belgium and the Netherlands.
PERILS had also explained that windstorm Ciarán’s industry loss was not unusual as impacts of this magnitude can be expected to occur once every four years, but for France it was a rarer windstorm event with the loss level generated by Ciarán expected to be reached or exceeded once every twelve years.
As we said before, it seems notable that the initial estimates of insured losses for windstorm Ciarán from risk modellers fell far below where the industry total has now risen. Verisk had initially pegged the storm at between €800 million and €1.3 billion and Moody’s RMS had put it at between €900 million and €1.5 billion.
Christoph Oehy, CEO of PERILS, said, “While Windstorm Ciarán’s track meant that most of the losses were restricted to northern France and the Channel Islands, the industry loss was still considerable. It is easy to imagine that had the area of extreme winds been wider, or the storm tracked more to the south or north, many more insured assets would have been affected, and the industry loss would have been much bigger. As such Ciarán was a narrow escape and serves as an important reminder of the destructive power of European windstorms.”
English (US) ·