Steady Growth of insured property assets despite COVID-19 pandemic - PERILS

Insured assets have grown steadily despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the PERILS Industry Exposure Database (IED).

European windstorm now stands at €61.6 trillion of insured property values as of January 1 2021. This is the largest exposure in the database and represents a steady year-on-year growth of 3 percent (4 percent at constant FX rates) of insured property assets despite the impact of recessions in many countries due to the Covid-19 pandemic. A similar pattern can be observed in Australia, New Zealand, Italy and Turkey, where growth in insured property assets is outpacing GDP growth.

Released by PERILS, the independent Zurich-based company providing industry-wide catastrophe insurance data, The PERILS IED 2021 includes detailed information on $87 trillion of natural perils exposed sums insured, representing a premium volume of approximately $120 billion.

The database contains up-to-date information about property market sums insured exposed to natural perils in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

For Australia, the IED for the motor line of business has also been updated for the first time. The IED 2021 for Canada, compiled by CatIQ, the Canadian subsidiary of PERILS, will be released later this month. In addition, the database includes IEDs for Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand which were recently released for the first time in March 2021.

The PERILS IED 2021 is the result of a joint effort by the PERILS teams in Zurich, Sydney and Toronto. The annual update of the PERILS IED has been produced from the ground-up and is based on current sums insured information received from more than two-thirds of the insurance market across all territories covered by PERILS. The market sums insured are available by CRESTA zone, property line of business and coverage type. The in-force date of the exposure data is 1 January 2021. Information about prevailing coverage conditions is also provided.

Luzi Hitz, CEO of PERILS, said: "Each year we produce the market exposure portfolios afresh by using updated sums insured data kindly provided by insurers in each country. It is a major undertaking resulting in the most up-to-date IEDs available in the marketplace. We are extremely grateful to the companies which support us by providing their data. Without their support, there would be no reliable IEDs.”

Darryl Pidcock, head of PERILS Asia-Pacific, commented: "This is the first time PERILS has updated the motor IED for Australia, in addition to the property IED. Given the hailstorm activity in 2020 and the associated losses in both LOBs, there is no doubt that there is a lot of value in providing the IED for both motor and property. We are as always very grateful to our insurance partners in Australia and New Zealand who have been extremely supportive in providing us with their most up-to-date information.”

Dalida Bachmann, head of client relationship at PERILS, added: “Our exposure and loss data are based on identical sources and methodology. This consistency is much valued by users of our database as it eliminates data uncertainty, a big plus when validating model output, analyzing the vulnerability of insured assets, or when assessing the expected loss costs of industry-loss-based risk transfer products. This better understanding of Cat risk was PERILS’ mission from day one and our constantly expanding databases continue to contribute to that.”

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