Catastrophe loss data aggregator PERILS has released its fourth and final property loss estimate for the hailstorms that affected the greater Sydney region in December 2018, raising the figure to AU $798 million (US $550 million).
The estimate, which comes a full year after the original event, also includes the property losses for storm activity in south-eastern Queensland on subsequent days.
It represents a considerable increase on PERILS’s third estimate of AU $766 million (US $528 million), which was released six months after the hailstorm.
However, PERILS believes that its figure will only account for slightly more than half the total losses from the event, given that it only covers claims from the property line of business.
“This is the first Australian hail event for which a market loss footprint, based on loss data collected from affected insurance companies, is available at a postcode level and by property lines of business,” said Darryl Pidcock, Head of PERILS Asia-Pacific.
“The combination of this loss information with PERILS property market sums insured allows users of our data to determine damage degrees as a percentage of sums insured,” he explained.
“Furthermore, the correlation of these damage degrees with provided hail metrics, based on radar measurements by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, enables the validation of vulnerability functions used in Cat models. As such, we believe that the Sydney Hailstorms loss footprint will ultimately contribute to a better understanding of hail risk in Australia.”
The hailstorms were part of a convective storm system which affected Sydney and surrounding regions in New South Wales on 20 December 2018, as multiple storm cells generated strong winds, rainfall and intense hail with hailstones of more than 8 cm in diameter.
In terms of 2019 events, PERILS has said that it will not provide loss data for the bushfires and Queensland Hailstorms in November, as it does not expect them to exceed its loss capturing trigger of AU $500 million property insurance market loss.
In Europe, insured losses from the tidal floods in Venice and other coastal parts of Italy in November are also unlikely to exceed the PERILS loss capturing trigger of EUR 200m, as losses from sea water flooding are generally not covered by flood insurance in Italy.
PERILS also does not plan to report on the flooding in England in November 2019, or the flash and river floods throughout Italy.
