Final Insured Losses for Europe’s Storm Friederike/David Estimated at €1.7B: PERILS

The final loss estimate for Extratropical Cyclone Friederike, also known as David, reached €1.672 Billion ($1.906 billion), according to PERILS, the independent Zurich-based organization that provides industry-wide catastrophe insurance data.

This compares to the previous PERILS loss report of €1.675 billion ($1.910 billion), which was released on July 17, 2018.

A compact and fast-moving extratropical cyclone, Friederike caused significant damage across the British Isles, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany on Jan. 17-18, 2018, with most of the damage occurring in the Netherlands and Germany, said PERILS. The storm resulted in the deaths of eight people in Germany, three in the Netherlands and one in Belgium.

Friederike happened exactly 11 years after windstorm Kyrill which at the time generated a Europe-wide insured property market loss of €3.651 billion ($4.163 billion), based on PERILS data.

PERILS said its analysis of insured property market losses is based on loss data collected from affected insurers. In this final PERILS loss report, released 12 months after the event, the market loss data for Friederike are made available by CRESTA zone and property line of business for all affected countries. The loss footprint information is complemented by gust speed values and loss ratios which show the incurred loss from Friederike as a percentage of the sums insured.

“While the market loss from Windstorm Friederike of €1.672 billion is significant, we estimate that there have been 11 European windstorm events in the past 40 years which would have exceeded this figure had they occurred today,” commented Eduard Held, head of Products at PERILS.

“These events include 87J, Daria, Herta, Vivian, Wiebke, Anatol, Lothar, Martin, Jeanett, Kyrill and Klaus. On this basis, we estimate that the Europe-wide market loss level of Friederike would be reached or exceeded on average once every three-to-four years,” he added. “For Germany and the Netherlands alone, however, the return periods for the respective market losses would be higher.”

Source: PERILS