PERILS has increased the European flood industry loss estimate for Storm Boris by 10%, bringing it to €2.08 billion.

Catastrophe data aggregator PERILS has raised its insurance industry loss estimate for the severe flooding that occurred in parts of Central Europe in September 2024 due to Storm Boris. The total increase was 10%, bringing the estimate to €2.08 billion.

This revised industry loss estimate marks the first event where PERILS is employing its new methodology, which combines its traditional approach—relying on reported data—with that of CRESTA CLIX, another loss data service owned by PERILS. CRESTA CLIX uses a range of sources to provide a broader perspective.

PERILS typically collects loss data from affected insurers, which is then grossed up to reflect the total market. The new methodology integrates this with expert evaluations from CRESTA CLIX, allowing PERILS to broaden its coverage globally, excluding the United States.

The first event to use this new methodology was the flooding in Central Europe caused by Storm Boris, impacting Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Italy, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania. Initially, PERILS estimated the losses at €1.886 billion in early November.

With this new estimate, the industry loss has increased by just over 10% to €2.08 billion. Most of the losses occurred in Austria, the Czech Republic, and Poland, while Italy and Slovakia were also affected.

Christoph Oehy, CEO of PERILS, commented, “Europe has experienced three major flood events in 2024, causing significant losses for the insurance industry. These include floods in southern Germany in June, Central Europe in September, and the Valencia region of Spain in October. Together, these events have resulted in industry losses exceeding EUR 7 billion, only surpassed by the Bernd floods of July 2021. This underscores the critical role of the European insurance industry in recovery efforts following major flood disasters.”

“Like our first loss report for the Central Europe Floods, we have combined the PERILS and CRESTA CLIX methodologies to determine the industry loss for each affected country,” Oehy continued. “This approach will be used by PERILS for all events from 1 January 2025 onwards, demonstrating the benefits of having a single source for international catastrophe industry losses.”

This new methodology from PERILS is both innovative and potentially significant. The reinsurance and insurance-linked securities (ILS) market often lacks reliable triggers for industry-loss risk transfer instruments in many regions. Whether market participants will adopt a trigger data provider that incorporates expert judgment remains to be seen, especially in countries where reported coverage is low or concentrated with major global players.

If the market can accept an industry-loss trigger that includes expert judgment, it could open new regions to risk transfer instruments such as insurance-linked swaps (ILWs) or industry-loss trigger catastrophe bonds. It will be interesting to see this new approach from PERILS being more broadly adopted next year.