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Law360, London (August 12, 2020, 4:59 PM BST ) Global insured property losses arising from disasters rose to $31 billion in the first six months of 2020 due to increasingly destructive storms and natural disasters that may be connected to climate change, insurer Swiss Re has found.
Swiss Re published a new report Tuesday which found that property losses from disasters were $31 billion, up from $23 billion in the first half of 2019. The rise was due to natural catastrophes like Storms Dennis and Ciara, which rocked the U.K. in early 2020, Swiss Re said.
A significant chunk of the losses related to so-called secondary perils — the after-effects of a large natural disaster, the insurer said.
"Climate change is a systemic risk, and unlike COVID-19 it doesn't have an expiry date," said Jerome Jean Haegeli, Swiss Re Group Chief Economist.
Haegeli added that 60% of the losses recorded in the first half of 2020 were uninsured.
"As the severity of secondary perils will likely increase in the coming years, the importance of the insurance industry in closing natural catastrophe protection gaps is very clear," he added.
The figures published Tuesday do not include any losses related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The total global property losses, including insured and uninsured losses, hit $75 billion in the first half of 2020, up from $57 billion from the first half of 2019.
Swiss Re said the main driver of the losses in 2020 were secondary perils, with thunderstorms in North America playing a major role. Of the $31 billion in insured losses, $28 billion of losses were a result of natural disasters.The report also found that more than 2,000 have lost their lives or gone missing as a result of disaster events so far in 2020.
The report said that two major storms in the U.K. contributed more than $2 billion to the overall global losses.
Storm Dennis is believed to have caused some of the the U.K.'s worst-ever winter flooding, particularly across Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where rain fell on ground already saturated from Storm Ciara the week before.
U.K. insurers have paid out more than £360 million ($469 million) in claims following Ciara and Dennis, the Association of British Insurers said in March.
Most claims related to flooding, which totaled £213 million, according to the ABI. More than half of the value of those flood claims was related to home property damage.
European insurers could face bills as high as €1.9 billion ($2.24 billion) from Storm Ciara, which swept through Europe as well as the U.K., catastrophe modeling company AIR Worldwide said in February.
--Additional reporting by Martin Croucher. Editing by Rebecca Flanagan.
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