PERILS adds European floods to market coverage

PERILS, the independent Zurich-based provider of industry-wide catastrophe insurance data, has announced the expansion of its market coverage to include exposure and event loss data for European floods. The new service is in addition to PERILS’ windstorm coverage in Europe and covers Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.

The expanded coverage means that data for industry-wide property sums insured exposed to flood in the listed countries are available in the PERILS database. PERILS’ industry loss reporting service for Europe will also now include loss reporting for both wind and flood events that generate industry losses of EUR 500 million or higher.

In line with the PERILS methodology, the flood market exposures and event losses are based on data collected directly from participating insurers at CRESTA zone and property line of business level. The resulting industry exposure database (IED) and event losses can be used for a range of applications, including risk assessment and structuring of triggers for industry loss-based risk transfer products, as well as catastrophe risk model validation.

PERILS has also announced that it has raised the loss capturing thresholds for extratropical windstorm and flood in Europe to EUR 500 million from EUR 200 million for pan-European industry losses and to EUR 300 million for industry losses in an individual country. For natural catastrophe events in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Japan, the loss capturing thresholds remain unchanged at AUD 500 million, NZD 300 million, CAD 300 million and JPY 100 billion, respectively.

The adjustment in the thresholds is driven by organic market growth and claims inflation over the last 13 years since PERILS was established.

Commenting on the expansion, Luzi Hitz, chief executive officer of PERILS, 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.”

He added: “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.”