Last summer, the floods on the Ahr and Erft again revealed a major deficit: German households have not yet taken out adequate insurance against natural hazards such as heavy rain or floods.

Only about four out of ten households have a natural hazard policy to cover the costs of a flooded garage or a roof truss that has been eroded by floods.

Phillip Krohn

Editor in business, responsible for "People and Business".

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The situation is very different with the risks that have been more common for a long time, such as storm and hail.

More than nine out of ten homeowners have standard home policies.

If you live in your own house, you pay directly to an insurer.

On the other hand, if you live for rent, you contribute to the contributions through a cost allocation.

A hurricane like "Ylenia", which is raging across Germany these days, can also directly damage private households in another way: If branches or entire tree trunks fall on a car, it depends on the extent of the selected cover whether the damage can be compensated .

Liability policies do not cover storm damage

The pure motor vehicle liability insurance is mandatory, as it protects the injured party from having to bear high financial burdens in the event of an accident.

On the other hand, if you want to cover the costs of damage to your own vehicle, you need comprehensive insurance.

But of course not everyone has it - also because the value of the car is far lower than that of houses.

In order to find out about the development of claims, a look at the most recent natural hazard report by the insurer association GDV is instructive.

In the two years on which the report is based, households in Saarland were hit hardest by storms.

This is followed by North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony and Rhineland-Palatinate.

In the westerly wind zone, the houses in the western federal states are more exposed than in the east.

Apartments in Brandenburg and Berlin are affected the least by storms.

In the 2020 reporting year, damage totaling 2 billion euros was broken down as follows: 1.3 million from storms, 300 million from natural hazards and 350 million from storm and hail damage to cars.

Last year, the damage caused by the flood was much higher at 12.5 billion euros, 9 billion of which was for natural hazards.

Risk managers in the industry and meteorologists have been emphasizing for years that climate change will cause greater damage on average.