Catastrophe data loss aggregation and estimation firm, PERILS AG, has released the 2019 update of its Industry Exposure Database (IED), showing that for the second consecutive year the biggest exposure in the database is European windstorm.
PERILS explains that the updated country IEDs for 2019 have once again been produced from scratch, and are based on exposure information from over 100 national and international insurance firms, representing a total premium volume of $90 billion generated from roughly 219 million property policies.
The database contains updated property sums insured and number of risks exposed to natural perils in Australia, Europe (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom) and Turkey.
PERILS says the in-force date of the exposure data is 1 January 2019. Information about prevailing cover condition such as deductibles and cover limits has also been updated.
As was the case last year, European windstorm represents the biggest exposure with some 191 million individual risks representing approximately $64 trillion of insured property values.
Compared to 1 January 2018, the overall European windstorm sums insured increased in EUR by +3.8% (+4.0% at constant FX rates). Year-on-year variations in Australia, Italy and Turkey range from +1% to +32% (-17% to +8%).
The year-on-year developments in all territories are mainly driven by movements in collected sums insured data and movements in market benchmarks.
“This year’s update marks the 10th annual release of the PERILS IED,” said Luzi Hitz, Chief Executive Officer of PERILS.
“Like every year, the market portfolios were produced by collecting the Cat-exposed sums insured from insurance companies in each country and by calculating the market sums insured based on the collected data.”
“The fundamental purpose of our IED is to increase data availability for Cat insurance, thereby increasing the understanding and tradability of Cat risk. Our success over the years is proof that the insurance industry is actively supporting our efforts.
“We are as ever grateful for this support and take it as encouragement to expand our market coverage to other important Cat markets.”
Eduard Held, Head of Products at PERILS, added, “The difference between the PERILS IED and other IEDs is that it is purely based on company data exclusively received from insurers.”
“This means it represents the exposure reality to the highest possible degree. When combined with data from the PERILS event loss database which is based on an identical methodology, it serves as a robust basis for market benchmarking, validating natural catastrophe models, the structuring and risk assessment of industry loss-based risk transfer products such as Cat bonds or ILWs, and the analysis and calibration of vulnerability functions.”
