Climate disasters cost insurers 6.5 billion euros in 2023

Europe 1 with AFP 7:29 a.m., March 27, 2024

In 2023, climate disasters in France will cost 6.5 billion euros to insurers who are worried about the “change of scale” and the acceleration of these devastating events, Florence Lustman, president of France Assureurs, said on Wednesday. . Concerning climate risk, we are experiencing a clear “change of scale”, with 2023 being “the third most serious year in terms of climate disasters after 1999 and 2022”, the president of the sector federation told AFP.

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An average of 2.7 billion in the 2000s

The year 1999, marked by storms Lothar and Martin, remains the worst so far with an estimated cost of 13.8 billion euros in constant euros, followed by 2022 whose climatic events cost 10 billion euros to insurers. We are crossing “successive levels in the cost of climate risk”. In the years 2000 to 2008 “we were on average 2.7 billion euros per year”. Then between 2010 and 2019 “we went to 3.7 billion. And if I take the average over the last four years, including 2022 and 2023, I am at six billion,” she added.

There were many extreme phenomena in 2023, which is also the second hottest year in France after 2022, including "15 windy phenomena, with winds of more than 150 km/h", "14 floods with at each time, more than 15 municipalities which were the subject of a natural disaster order, the "Ciaran and Domingos storms which affected the northwest and caused 517,000 losses at a cost of 1.6 billion euros ", and the floods in the north which left "40,000 victims".