The bill for natural disasters is steep for insurers: the year 2022 will undoubtedly have been the worst since 1999 in France, with an estimated cost of 10 billion euros, the profession announced on Thursday January 26.
This amount for 2022 marks a significant increase compared to the period 2017-2021.
These climatic phenomena cost an average of 3.5 billion euros per year over the period.
The year 2022 is also the worst year since 1999, marked by storms Lothar and Martin.
"On the front of climatic events", last year "is truly the annus horribilis", underlined Florence Lustman, president of France Assureurs, questioned on Europe 1. She highlights "the intensification of extreme climatic phenomena" and an "increase in their frequency", direct consequences of global warming.
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The human factor comes into play at all levels.
In the context of floods, for example, too much artificialization of the soil tends to aggravate the phenomenon.
In detail, the episodes of hail and storms between May and July cost 6.4 billion euros, the federation told AFP.
Added to this are the effects of the drought, particularly on individual houses, for an envelope close to 2.5 billion euros.
Some 3.3 million homes located in high risk areas
In France, approximately 54% of individual houses are located in areas with medium or high exposure to shrinkage-swelling of clay soils (RGA), a phenomenon linked to successive episodes of summer drought and soil re-wetting. in autumn or winter which can cause significant damage.
Some 3.3 million homes, or about 16% of the total, are even located in high risk areas.
Losses observed on harvests, floods and episodes of forest fires during the summer complete the picture.
Hailstorms, storms, floods, drought... climatic phenomena have multiplied in France in 2022, spreading throughout the territory.
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Regions usually spared are now affected, like the mythical Breton forest of Brocéliande, affected this summer by a fire.
The storms are occasionally more violent.
"The hailstones now reach the size of a tennis ball and no longer a ping-pong ball", illustrates Florence Lustman.
The professional federation of insurers is also not very optimistic for the years to come, in particular because of the increasingly visible effects of climate change.
Global warming, "one of the main concerns" of insurers
In a study released in parallel on Thursday, France Assureurs places climate change among the three main risks identified by the profession for the next five years, along with cyberattacks and the degraded economic environment.
"The now almost structural nature of this risk" makes it "one of the main concerns of the insurance profession", specify the authors of the study.
The cumulative bill should exceed 140 billion euros for the next 30 years, double the last 30.
France also has a special framework for compensation for damage caused by extreme climatic phenomena.
The State provides its guarantee via the French public reinsurer CCR.
In total, natural disasters worldwide have caused heavy damage, estimated at 270 billion dollars last year, marked by Hurricane Ian in the United States, according to the reinsurer Munich Re. In 2021, the cost had was higher, at $320 billion.
With AFP
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