A Zurich-based catastrophe insurance provider has revealed its fourth and final property loss estimate for the catastrophic hailstorms that hit the greater Sydney region and surrounding regions in New South Wales on Dec. 20, 2018.
PERILS estimated the property insurance market loss for the Sydney storm activity to be at $798 million – slightly higher than the third loss estimate of $766 million issued on June 20, six months after the event.
The loss estimate only covers 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. 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.”
PERILS also announced it will not provide loss data for the Queensland hailstorms of November 17 and the November 2019 bushfires, as these events will not exceed its loss capturing trigger of $500 million property insurance market loss.
