Insurers count costs of floods
August 8, 2007 by admin
Filed under News, News-Insurance
The floods in the West Country last month, along with the Central England floods in June, have cumulatively been termed the worst in 60 years in the UK.
Now, as the waters have receded, Britain’s insurers have been counting the costs.
Aviva, owner of Norwich Union and the biggest insurance company in the country, announced last week that it faced £340 million-worth of claims, split evenly between the two deluges.
Royal Bank of Scotland, the UK’s second-largest home insurer said that the floods would cost them around £250 million.
Insurance premiums for extreme weather conditions are likely to go up nationwide, with those in areas which have previously flooded likely to be most severely affected.
Last month, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) was forced to revise its estimates upwards for the recent floods to a grand total of £2.5 billion.
According to Risk Management Solutions, the damage caused by the floods was much smaller than that wreaked by those in 1947, which would cost “between £4.5 billion and £6 billion” if repeated today.
