PERILS lifts Windstorm Babet and Aline industry loss to €691m

The insurance industry loss from October 2023’s European windstorms Babet and Aline is now estimated to be €691 million by catastrophe data aggregator PERILS AG, with a slight increase to its previous figure.

Back in December 2023, PERILS had initially estimated that these windstorms had caused an insurance industry loss of around €509 million.

Then, in January 2024, PERILS raised the industry loss estimate considerably, adding 34% to take the total to €683 million.

Now, just over a further percent has been added, to take the total estimated insurance industry loss for European windstorms Babet and Aline to €691 million, PERILS said today.

Flooding and storms caused by the two windstorms Babet and Aline impacted the British Isles and northwestern Europe during the period of 18th to 22nd October 2023.

The two low pressure systems were named Babet by the UK Met Office (Viktor by the Free University of Berlin (FUB)) and Aline by the Spanish state meteorological agency (Wolfgang by the FUB).

The loss estimate includes loss data collected from affected insurance markets, including Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark and Norway.

Still, some GBP 474 million, the majority of the losses from the storms, are said to have occurred in the UK and were mainly flood-related, according to PERILS.

Luzi Hitz, Product Manager at PERILS, said, “It has been six months since the Babet-Aline Floods and during that period many parts of Europe and particularly the UK and Ireland, have continued to experience persistent extreme wind and rainfall events.

“The British Isles witnessed a record number of named storm systems, many bringing extensive rainfall leading to flooding. While the region has seen major winter floods in the past, such as the Desmond and Eva-Frank Floods in December 2015, given milder autumn and winter temperatures there is a greater capacity for water storage in the atmosphere which tends to precipitate as rain rather than snow.

“It is therefore likely the warming climate will drive a rise in the frequency of winter flood events.”