PERILS estimates storm Desmond losses at £717m

PERILS, the Zurich-based organisation that provides catastrophe insurance data, has released its initial loss estimate for the floods in the UK resulting from Storm Desmond.

The floods, which took place during the period from December 4 to 24, 2015 caused £717 million in insured property market losses.

Windstorm losses from the event are estimated at £42 million. As a result, Desmond’s losses from the peril of windstorm do not qualify for further reporting by PERILS.

Storm Desmond brought record-breaking rainfall to the UK, which fell on ground already saturated from a series of depression systems during November, according to PERILS.

This led to severe flooding which mainly affected the counties of Cumbria and Lancashire in Northwest England, with flood waters peaking on December 5 and 6, 2015.

In addition to the UK, Ireland and Scandinavia were also affected by wind and rain from storm Desmond between December 4 and 6, 2015.

"Given the record-breaking amount of rain which fell over Northwest England from 4 to 6 December, and the fact that it fell on water-saturated soil following an exceptionally wet November, it is no surprise that extensive flooding occurred from overflowing rivers and surface water run-off,” said Luzi Hitz, chief executive officer of PERILS.

“After 2005 and 2009, this is the third time that the Northwest of England has been affected by severe floods. This clearly underpins the need for the reliable UK flood insurance data which PERILS strives to provide, helping to further improve the industry’s understanding of UK flood risk and ultimately making it easier to insure.”

Eduard Held, head of products at PERILS, added: "After careful investigation and numerous discussions with data-providing insurance companies and other key market players, we concluded that for our initial estimate we would view the flooding from Desmond as an event on its own.

“In subsequent loss reports, and in line with our approach of applying the prevailing event definition used by the re/insurance markets, we may need to combine the flood losses from storm Desmond with flood losses from later events.”