Hailstorms in Europe
While an event comparable with the catastrophic Munich hailstorm in 1984 has not occurred to date, one can happen at any time. An event of similar magnitude would cause much higher insured losses given today’s concentration of insured values in Europe.
Hail events as intense as the Munich hailstorm occur every couple of years over central Europe. Yet only a few pass over a large city such as Munich, and therefore the damage they cause is less severe.
By the same token, hail events which follow even more adverse tracks are also conceivable, for example those affecting two or more major metropolitan areas. Hence, the question is not whether a hail event causing much greater damage will to occur, but rather when.
To better assess the scale and probability of hail damage in Europe, Swiss Re has developed a probabilistic, event set based hail model, representing the latest addition to its internally developed platform of risk assessment models (earthquake, windstorm, flood). Covering European countries with the greatest hail exposures in terms of loss potentials, the model computes expected losses and derives a relationship between loss severities and their probabilities of occurrence. It is also capable of analysing both motor own damage and building portfolios.
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