Flooding could cost UK insurance industry £400 million

Sophie Yeo in Responding to Climate Change:  The heavy rains and floods that have besieged the UK over the last month will cost the insurance industry £400 million, says consulting firm PwC. This could rise over the next few weeks, if the Environment Agency’s predictions of further flooding come to pass, warns Mohammad Khan, an insurance partner in the company.

“The impact of the extreme rain and floods of recent months has become progressively worse. For the UK insurance industry, although this may not be the final estimate of the full costs of all the weather we have had, indications are that this could leave the industry up to £400m out of pocket,” he says. “This estimate could develop further, particularly given the further flood warnings in place in the UK this week.”

So far, about 1,800 properties have been damaged by the floods. Khan adds that, when taking into account the uninsured losses of the floods, the true cost of December and January’s freak weather is likely to rise above the £400m mark.

The Environment Agency warned today that communities across the south of England should prepare themselves for yet more flooding, as rivers including the Avon, the Parrett and the Severn continue to rise....

The interior of Lloyds of London, shot by Daniel Lin, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license