The flood disaster in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia will be even more expensive for the insurance industry than initially feared.
Allianz alone expects damage to be around 500 million euros.
Berlin / Munich - The low "Bernd" caused enormous damage to property and infrastructure with the floods. According to the latest estimates, the flood disaster in Germany is likely to cost insurance companies between 4.5 and 5.5 billion euros. Almost two thirds of the damage occurred in Rhineland-Palatinate, almost a third in North Rhine-Westphalia and the remaining five to ten percent in Bavaria and Saxony, announced the Association of the German Insurance Industry (GDV) on Tuesday.
In the meantime, the association has recorded a large part of the damage, said General Manager Jörg Asmussen in Berlin.
The low pressure area “Bernd” raged from July 13th to 18th, 2021 inclusive. “We are now assuming insured losses of between 4.5 billion and 5.5 billion euros,” continues Asmussen.
"According to the updated damage estimate, around 40,000 motor vehicles were damaged or destroyed by the floods." The damage to motor insurers amounts to around 200 million euros, to transport insurers 100 million, and various large insured losses each cost tens of millions.
Just over a week ago, the GDV initially assumed damage of four to five million euros, according to initial estimates.
Allianz: "Number of claims reports will continue to increase"
Allianz insurance alone expects damage payments of half a billion euros to its private and corporate customers. There are now around 10,000 claims reports on damaged houses and household effects and around 3,000 claims reports on damaged vehicles. That should increase significantly in the next few days, said board member Jochen Haug on Tuesday in Unterföhring. "Our current forecast assumes a total of over 30,000 property damage and over 5,000 vehicle damage with a damage volume of over 500 million euros." Allianz later forwards part of the invoice to its reinsurance companies.
There are currently around 230 experts for the alliance in the severely affected areas.
Around 100 emergency generators and 1,000 drying devices were brought to the site for the insured and 250 drying companies were commissioned.
In order to make necessary purchases for daily needs possible straight away, advances of up to 10,000 euros would be paid out to customers.
According to the GDV, heavy rain and hail had already caused insured damage of 1.7 billion euros in June.
"Overall, this year with storms, floods, heavy rain and hail should be the most damaging year since 2002," said Asmussen.
At that time, the insured storm damage was 10.9 billion euros.
(dpa)