Windstorm Eleanor insured losses reach $867 million: Perils

Perils AG raised its final estimate of the insured property market loss from Cyclone Burglind, also known as Eleanor, to €756 million ($867.1 million).

In February 2018, the Zurich-based catastrophe loss data company estimated insured losses from the storm, which caused significant damage across Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom on Jan. 2 and 3, 2018, at €643 million. That estimate was raised to €680 million in April and then raised again to €724 million six months after the event.

The depression — named Burglind by the Free University of Berlin and Eleanor by the Irish and U.K. national weather services — affected a very large area across the British Isles and Western Europe, causing the deaths of at least six people in France.

“Relative to its size, Switzerland was the country most affected by the event, with more than two-thirds of the countrywide insured values exposed to gust speeds in excess of 100km/h,” the firm said in a statement on Thursday. “While the incurred industry loss levels for the other countries affected were not unusual, in the case of Switzerland, the Burglind event loss level would be expected to be reached or exceeded once in approximately 14 years.”