Flood events are not restricted by geopolitical borders. In a landmass with multiple adjacent countries such as Europe, flood risk can have a wide-reaching impact on both business and society—directly because of property damage losses and indirectly because of supply-chain disruption and contingent business interruption.
Executive Summary
The sizable and growing economic impact of floods in Europe presents a significant opportunity to improve resilience in the region, both physically and financially. New modeling capabilities are helping insurers and reinsurers increase understanding of the characteristics that make flood hazard such a challenging risk to evaluate.Recent major floods in Europe have shown the potential for such large-scale flood losses, which our firm’s analysis found could be even larger in the future. Changes in both flood hazard and growth in the exposure at risk will be the main drivers of the increased losses. Data produced by RMS shows that nearly 10 percent of insurable exposure across Europe could be at risk of a 1-in-100-year inland flood. Or, put another way, exposure worth trillions of euros is at risk within high-hazard flood zones.
