PartnerRe Estimates German Hailstorm Losses
Bermuda-based PartnerRe Ltd. today [Sept 18] estimated that the cost of the German Hailstorms in the last week of July 2013 will be between $50 million and $60 million pre-tax and net of retrocession and reinstatement premiums.
These losses will be recorded in the Company’s third quarter 2013 results. The majority of these losses are expected to impact the Company’s Catastrophe sub-segment.
News reports indicated that hail stones the size of “tennis balls” damaged property in the German village of Wassel in Sehnte.
According to catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide, after a prolonged period of above average temperatures in Central Europe, several severe hail events were triggered on the 27th and 28th of July, ahead of a low pressure system named Andreas.
On July 27 in northern Germany, a hail supercell was first reported northeast of Dortmund and propagated toward Wolfsburg. A second severe hail storm on July 28 was similarly triggered, but affected Reutlingen, Nürtingen and Kirchheim unter Teck in southern Germany, which is a heavily populated region with high concentrations of exposure value.
Reported losses for both events combined are estimated to exceed EUR 1.3 billion [$1.7 billion], with some estimates of up to EUR 1.5 billion [$2 billion], making this the second largest hail event after the devastating 1984 Munich hailstorm and one of the ten costliest natural disasters in Germany.
