Kathmandu. Wildfires, heat waves, and extreme weather disasters are on the rise in Europe. The damage caused by such incidents is also increasing. However, the properties with a lot of damage are uninsured. <\/p>\n
As such disasters increase over the summer, insurance companies have warned that the ‘safety gap’ in the European region is widening. This is because the cost of recovery after a disaster is much higher than insurance coverage. <\/p>\n
Last July, a massive wildfire in parts of France and Spain devastated more than 300,000 acres of land. It has been seen as a ‘big shock’ to local economies. Recently, there were fires in Greece. Winds were blowing at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour. <\/p>\n
In addition, the European region experienced a number of heat waves during the summer. This led to red alerts, life-threatening warnings, and drought-like conditions. The temperature was often higher than 104 degrees Fahrenheit. <\/p>\n
Some of Europe’s largest insurance companies have said that the region is not prepared to deal with the risk of wildfires and weather-related disasters. As a result, a significant portion of the economic damage is uninsured. <\/p>\n
According to Mario Greco, CEO of Zurich Insurance Group, all weather-related risks can be insured. “But the cost of dealing with them is becoming increasingly expensive,” he said, adding, “We have enough experience from the US and Australia to prevent forest fires and reduce their impact. But this requires significant change and concrete action.” \u2019<\/p>\n
“Often, countries, local authorities and governments are not prepared. Because they don’t understand the true extent of the risk or realize it exists,” Greco said in an interview with Carolyn Roth on CNB’s “Squawk Box Europe” program. <\/p>\n
Extreme weather can put a heavy burden on the national budget. Because costs related to cold, healthcare, emergency infrastructure, transportation and agriculture can put pressure on the entire economy. <\/p>\n
In addition, Allianz Commercial reported last June that insurance companies paid $56.3 billion for wildfire damage in the 2010s. That’s six times more than $8.7 billion paid in the 2000s. The hardest-hit sectors include utilities and energy, real estate, construction, agriculture and transportation. <\/p>\n
The devastating fire in Los Angeles last January caused significant damage to the wealth of some of America’s wealthiest people. It caused a combined $1.9 billion in losses to insurance companies Munich Re and Hannover Re in the first quarter of 2025. <\/p>\n
According to the Swiss Re Institute, the Los Angeles fires were the costliest wildfires in the world. The fires caused $40 billion in insurance losses, and the total insurance losses from natural disasters are expected to reach $107 billion by 2025. <\/p>\n
According to a Financial Times calculation, the total damage from fires and heat waves reached about $3.5 billion by the end of July. The damage occurred in the five eurozone countries most at risk of fires: Greece, Spain, Portugal and Romania. This is higher than the average annual impact estimate of 2.5 billion euros for the entire EU. <\/p>\n
According to Swiss Rican Chief Financial Officer Anders Malmstr\u00f6m, more assets in Europe than in the U.S. do not have insurance protection against natural disasters. “There is still a protection gap, especially in Europe. Which means there is a lot of assets but it’s not protected by insurance,” Malmstr\u00f6m said, “But it always starts with an assessment of the risk, then reduces the risk and then you can evaluate the risk and make sure that the insurance covers the rest of the risk.” \u2019<\/p>\n
According to Malmstrom, the risk has increased. Because a lot of property has accumulated in these risky areas and homes have become expensive. \u2013 Agency<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kathmandu. Wildfires, heat waves, and extreme weather disasters are on the rise in Europe. The damage caused by such incidents is also increasing. However, the properties with a lot of damage are uninsured. As such disasters increase over the summer, insurance companies have warned that the ‘safety gap’ in the European region is widening. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":317907,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45031,45044,45159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-317921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banner-news-en","category-international-news-en","category-news-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317921"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":317922,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317921\/revisions\/317922"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/media\/317907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/insurancekhabar.com\/ikbrapi\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}