Duane Michael Wagner Vero Beach Florida

Florida Citizens CEO: Last-Resort Insurer Adds More Than 5,000 Policies Weekly

• By Renee Kiriluk-Hill
• June 28, 2021 11:24 AM (EDT)

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. //BestWire// – Citizens Property Insurance Corp. is adding more than 5,000 homeowners policies weekly and could have 750,000 in force by the end of the year, according to Chief Executive Officer Barry Gilway.

It has added more than 200,000 policies since September 2019, he said. “At this point in time we’re really the only game in town,” he said. “If anything, the pace is picking up.”

The insurer of last resort for Florida homeowners tracks the source of incoming policies. Five carriers are each shedding more than 500 policies monthly, said Gilway, as losses continue on copious litigated claims, 85,000 last year alone.

“There is virtually no county where litigation has not increased,” he said. “We get 1,000 new litigated claims per month.” In May, 45% were catastrophe-related from 2017’s Hurricane Irma. In Miami-Dade county, a “staggering” 53% of water claims were litigated over the past four years.

Earlier this year, the state Office of Insurance Regulation found Florida accounted for 8.16% of all homeowners’ claims opened by insurance companies in the United States, but 76.4% of all homeowners lawsuits opened against insurance companies in the United States (BestWire, May 11, 2021).

Losses are consuming capital in a state where the surplus-to-premium ratio was already “ridiculously low,” Gilway added. Homeowners writers can raise capital or reduce policies by withdrawing from geographies or tightening underwriting.

One carrier wanted to limit coverage to homes covered by roofs no more than five years old, but the OIR denied the restriction, Gilway noted.

Insurers started aggressively raising rates in 2019, he said, and now Citizens is the most-competitive option for coverage 95% of the time.

Gilway is optimistic that legislation intended to mitigate assignment of claims and legal one-way attorney fee provisions will improve the market. Pushing for change is a “step in the right direction,” he said.

Earlier in June, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he will sign a comprehensive property insurance reform bill that he said is a beginning step in controlling a business climate dragged down by a tidal wave of litigation (BestWire, June 10, 2021). S.B. 76, among other things, will bar contractors from soliciting homeowners to file insurance claims and limit attorneys’ fees in homeowners lawsuits by setting a formula for calculating fees.

It will also allow larger annual rate increases for Citizens policyholders. Increases have been capped at 10%, but the bill will raise the limit gradually to 15%.

This year, Gilway said reinsurance prices have come in more favorably than forecast, buoyed by a strong global market taking a long-term view.

Gilway’s estimates of how many homeowners are forced to take Citizens’ last-resort coverage keep rising. In March, he said the policy count would be about 700,000 by the end of the year. He later increased the number to 724,000 a month (BestWire, May 11, 2021).

The top five writers of homeowners multiperil insurance in Florida in 2020, based on direct premiums written, were: Universal Insurance Holdings Group, with a 10.5% market share; Citizens Property Insurance Corp., 6.75%; State Farm Group, 6.04%; Tower Hill Group, 5.46%; and Progressive Insurance Group, 3.96%, according to BestLink.

Duane Michael Wagner Vero Beach Judge Says $48M in Coverage for Collapsed Condo Tower Won’t Be Enough

Judge Says $48M in Coverage for Collapsed Condo Tower Won’t Be Enough

Insurance Journal By Jim Sams | July 2, 2021

Five lawsuits have been filed against the Champlain Towers South Condominium Association in Surfside, Florida as of Thursday afternoon as plaintiffs move to preserve evidence at the site of the partially collapsed high-rise to stake a claim to a share of the reported $48 million in insurance coverage available.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman held an online emergency meeting Thursday morning. Attorneys for the condo association told him that they are aware of a $30 million property insurance policy from Great American and $18 million in liability insurance, according to a webcast of a segment of the hearing posted by the Miami Herald.

“It looks like for the property damage claims and for the injury and death claims there’s going to be a total of $48 million, which will obviously be inadequate to compensate everyone fully for the extent of their losses,” Hanzman said. “I don’t know whether there are any third-party claims. Maybe there are, maybe there aren’t. But we are dealing certainly with a limited pot as far as insurers go.”

As of Thursday, rescuers had found the remains of 18 people who had perished in the collapse of the condo tower and 145 residents were missing. The search and rescue effort was suspended on Thursday after movement in the debris pile raised concerns that the still-standing portion of the condo tower may fall as well.

A public relations firm hired by the condominium association board issued a statement on Friday saying that an independent receiver should be appointed to oversee the legal and claims process. Hanzman said during Thursday’s hearing that he was considering such an appointment.

“The collapse of Champlain Towers South is an unspeakable tragedy that has devastated our community, our neighbors, and our friends,” the association said. “We are grieving and our hearts ache for those who have been lost and for their families. They have our deepest condolences.”

Miami-Dade court records show that plaintiffs are suing the association and also a structural engineering firm and an architectural firm that participated in the 40-year recertification of the building. Morabito Consultants inspected the building in 2018 and reported that the pool deck was improperly constructed, causing water damage to the concrete below. SD Architects also participated in the recertification process.

The suits filed so far:

• A construction defects lawsuit by plaintiffs Steven, Mark, Shoshana and the estate of Harold Rosenberg against the association; Morabito Consultants and SD Architects.
• A premises liability lawsuit filed against the association by Alex J. Anton and the estate of Beatrice Guerra Rodriguez.
• A contract and indebtedness lawsuit filed against the association by Raysa Rodriguez.
• A construction defect lawsuit filed against the association by Manuel Drezner
• A construction defect lawsuit filed by Steve Rosenthal.

“There will be many people to blame for the tragic collapse of the Champlain Towers South Condominium. Therefore, it is crucial now to locate and preserve all of the relevant discovery and materials,” states the lawsuit filed by Rodriguez, who owns Unit 907 of the destroyed condo building.

At least one insurers has already agreed to pay up. The Miami Herald reported that an attorney for James River Insurance pledged during the hearing to tender the full $2 million limit on a liability insurance policy issued to the condominium association.

Donna Berger, an attorney who represents the condominium association, told USA Today that it was “despicable” that a lawsuit had been filed assigning blame while emergency crews were still searching for survivors.

But Chip Merlin, a Tampa attorney whose law firm represents Rodriguez, said a two-year claim filing deadline imposed by Senate Bill 76, signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis on June 11, forces attorneys to assert their clients rights early on. Merlin railed against the bill during his regular Tuesday webcast, saying it will harm people with complicated claims, such as his Champlain Towers South clients.

“How can you make a claim for law and ordinance in two years when the claim for it will not ripen for three years because it takes that long to do major work?” he said in an email in response to a question by the Claims Journal.

Attorneys for the Rosenberg family asked the court for permission to fly a drone over the rubble pile, according to media reports.

The Morgan & Morgan and Saltz Mongeluzzi & Bendesky law firms stressed the importance of early intervention to preserve evidence in the complaint they filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court. The two firms said they have experience in litigation related to previous structural collapses in Philadelphia, Atlantic City and New Orleans.

“On the basis of this extensive experience in building collapse litigation, plaintiffs’ counsel has seen first-hand that the evidence immediately observed and documented at a collapse site is often the most critical evidence in the case and can lead to figuring out how the collapse happened,” the suit says.

Stephen Marino, an attorney with Ver Ploeg & Marino in Miami, said most of the recovery to homeowners for property damage to the Champlain Towers building would likely come from the association’s property insurance policy. He said condo owners often buy additional coverage to insure their personal property, but that would not go toward reconstruction of the building.

He said judging by press reports, lengthy litigation seems inevitable. The Miami Herald reported the condominium association directors resigned their positions in 2019 because of constant squabbling over a potential $15 million special assessment to make repairs. A former city official reportedly told residents that the building was in good condition.

A negligence lawsuit would require the plaintiff to show that a responsible party knew or reasonably should have known of a defect, but failed to correct it, Marino said. More must be known about what caused the collapse before assigning blame.

“There seems to be a several-year history of awareness of a significant structural issues and a seeming, if not failure, at least a seeming slow approach to repairing those issues,” he said.

• 

Duane Michael Wagner Vero Beach Surfside collapse

Condo buyers shun older buildings after Surfside collapse

Amber Randall, South Florida Sun Sentinel Jul 6, 2021

Search and rescue personnel search for survivors through the rubble at the Champlain Towers South Condo in Surfside, Florida, Sunday, June 27, 2021. The apartment building partially collapsed on Thursday, June 24. (David Santiago/Miami Herald/TNS)

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – The collapse of the Champlain condo building in Surfside could reverberate through the real estate market in South Florida for months to come, real estate experts say.

The red-hot condo market could cool as buyers might hesitate to buy in older buildings, worried that the buildings have put off maintenance and that mammoth repair bills could be coming, brokers say.

Sellers, meanwhile, might discover they can’t find buyers as quickly as they’d hoped — and can’t get the price they were looking for. Over time, their investments in their condos could shrink.

“I can see property values falling in buildings until they renovate them to put them into a safe structure, not just something that is cosmetically nice to look at,“ said Bobbi Ocean, executive vice president at Galleria International Realty in Fort Lauderdale.

The Champlain South Tower collapsed June 24 after numerous engineering reports had warned of concrete deterioration and $9 million in needed repairs. The exact cause could take years to determine, but cities across South Florida are scrambling to ensure their buildings are safe.

It’s too early to say whether condo buyers are setting their sights elsewhere, but experts say fear could douse a condo market that had been boiling.

As of May, condos had reached their highest sales prices since 2012, according to data from RedFin, a national real estate brokerage. The median sale price for a condo in Palm Beach County was $225,000 in May, compared with $180,000 in Broward and $325,000 in Miami-Dade.

Real estate experts say the condo market could slide for six months or so before stabilizing.

“All things being equal, condos could take longer to sell than they would otherwise. There’s a lower likelihood of successfully marketing your property, and we could see a short-term price effect,” said Florida Atlantic University real estate economist Ken H. Johnson.

Newer buildings should remain in demand, experts say, but buyers may be skeptical of older condos, knowing that many have deferred maintenance and now will try to catch up.

“Condo associations that were typically waiting will be doing [repairs] faster, and costs are rising. I think we are going to see even more costs,” said Adam Mopsick of Amicon, a general contracting and construction management firm in Miami.

Shelby Morgan, a Realtor at Galleria International Realty, said none of his clients have yet backed out of contracts to buy condos. But, “any older condo is going to be looked at very hard,” he said. “In the older buildings, people will probably be more hesitant to buy.”

Less certain is whether condo shoppers will opt for single-family homes, which are generally more expensive and in historically short supply. For the same reason, condo owners may not look to flee, even knowing they could face large assessments for repairs.

“Condos have always been popular, especially ones on the ocean,” said Bonnie Heatzig, executive director of luxury sales at Douglas Elliman in Boca Raton. “But now, buyers will place greater emphasis on maintenance and past engineering reports for older buildings as part of the due diligence process.”

Mathew Cicero, with South Florida Condominium Management in Miami, doesn’t expect the condo market to bottom out. Prices should remain stable, he predicted. They’ll just grow more slowly.

Duane Michael Wagner Vero Beach The Champlain Towers Under insured

Judge: Demolished Florida Condo’s $48 Million Coverage ‘Inadequate’

• By Timothy Darragh
• July 07, 2021 04:08 PM (EDT)

MIAMI //BestWire// – The demolished condominium towers in Surfside, Florida, that catastrophically collapsed June 24 have property and liability insurance coverage of $48 million, a figure too low to compensate fully the displaced and the families of those who died, a judge said at a recent emergency hearing.

The Champlain Towers South condo association had $30 million in property coverage and $18 million in liability coverage, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Michael Hanzman was told at the hearing.

“As I suspected and maybe I hope I’m proven wrong… it looks like for the property damage and death coverage there is $48 million, which will obviously be inadequate to compensate everyone fully to the extent that they’re harmed. And that’s unfortunate,” Hanzman said. “We’re dealing with certainly a limited pot as far as insurers go.”

Great American Insurance Co. provided the $30 million property coverage, Hanzman confirmed at the hearing.

A lawyer for one of the building’s liability carriers, James River Insurance, said it is tendering its general commercial liability policy’s full $2 million.

An attempt to obtain comment from Great American Insurance Co. was not immediately successful.

The association was put into receivership following the partial collapse of the building, which as of July 7 resulted in 46 confirmed deaths, with another 94 individuals missing.

Hanzman said he is considering appointing attorneys to represent those who suffered property losses and survivors of those who lost their lives. He also said he would use the $2 million in liability coverage payments to provide need-based advances to relocating families and those who need financial help to pay for funerals.

In addition, Hanzman ordered attorneys to begin preparing to sell the beachfront property by consulting with professionals about its fair market value.

Observers expect the building collapse will drive “industrywide change” for home and condo owners associations, which will scrutinize inspections and transfer some risk to management companies (BestWire, July 6, 2021).

Travis Moore, a lobbyist for the Community Associations Institute, said it’s likely policymakers now will pay more attention to the issues surrounding the maintenance and insurance coverage of condos like Champlain South. He noted only two counties — Miami-Dade and Broward — require condo towers to be re-certified after 40 years and reinspected every 10 years thereafter.

Among other things, Moore said it’s likely insurers will want to know how many residents of a building have insurance, and how much coverage they have.

Additionally, the cost of insurance will continue to rise as the admitted market shrinks to a handful of companies, he said, noting one carrier, American Capital Assurance, went into receivership this spring (BestWire, April 5, 2021).

The institute last year published a report saying associations facing major renovations face challenges similar to the ones reported by the association at Champlain South: questions about the need for repairs, resistance to paying for them and setting adequate reserves before emergencies occur.

It’s important that building codes and construction standards in Florida and elsewhere reflect the latest in modern building science, said the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies’ Senior Vice President of Government Affairs, Jimi Grande.

“But equally as important as getting strong standards in place is creating targeted resources that communities can use to implement robust enforcement and inspection, as well as improve older structures,” he said. “Given this, we are continuing to press lawmakers to equip communities with the tools needed to undertake critical retrofits and ensure all homes and buildings are built to the safest standards.”

Great American Insurance Co. currently has a Best’s Financial Strength Rating of A+ (Superior). James River Holdings Group Ltd. entities are currently rated A- (Excellent).

Duane Michael Wagner Vero Beach, Florida Officials Consider Adopting New Condo Inspection Policies

Duane Michael Wagner Vero Beach

Florida Officials Consider Adopting New Condo Inspection Policies

Insurance Journal July 12, 2021 by Brendan Farrington

Across Florida, people living in the thousands of condominiums rising above the state’s 1,350 miles of coastline wonder if the building collapse in Surfside could happen to their home as state and local officials discuss what they can do to make sure it doesn’t.

Although building collapses are rare, local governments are looking at whether they need to adopt new inspection policies _ the vast majority of counties don’t require reinspection of a building once it’s completed.

“We inspect bridges every two years and yet a high-rise can go up right on the coast and it’s inspected at the time it’s built and never again,” said Volusia County Chair Jeff Brower, who said residents have sent photos of damaged buildings. “It’s kind of a wake-up call, and some of the pictures I have seen of our own structures are scary.”

He’s in contact with the governor’s office on the issue but thinks acting locally will be quicker. One idea is reinspecting new buildings after 10 years and, depending on what’s found, inspecting again another decade later.

Miami-Dade County, where the 40-year-old Champlain Towers South partially collapsed last month, requires buildings to be recertified as safe every 40 years and every 10 years after that.

“We definitely have to have inspection of the infrastructure of these buildings,” Brower said. “They’re not falling all over the place, but we don’t want even one more like the tragedy at Surfside.”

The collapse prompted the county _ as well as cities and towns within it _ to take a closer look at the recertification rules already in place. One municipality, North Miami Beach has evacuated the nearly 50-year-old Crestview Towers and won’t allow residents back in until required repairs have been completed. The county announced late Friday that the 28-story Miami-Dade County Courthouse will begin undergoing repairs immediately because of safety concerns found during a review prompted by the deadly collapse of a nearby condominium building

Florida’s beachfront high-rises take a beating from storms, saltwater and sea air, which can wear down concrete and rust rebar. There isn’t a mile of Florida’s coastline that hasn’t been affected in one way or another by hurricanes and tropical storms in the past 40 years _ with some areas taking multiple hits.

Although construction standards improved when statewide building codes were strengthened in the 1980s, the quality before then was often questionable, said Brett Turner, a project manager in southwest Florida who has been in the construction industry for 45 years.

“Up until the late ’80s, there virtually were no inspections. Our codes were horrible. So any building or house that was built prior to 1986 is suspect,” Turner said. “It was the Wild West _ whatever you could get away with if you were making a buck.”

Turner, who previously specialized in repairing older buildings, said he’s seen very dangerous damage in Florida buildings. “I’m surprised that (Surfside) is the first one that I’ve seen this happen to,” he said. “I’m not surprised it happened; I’m surprised it’s the first one.”

In Boca Raton, officials are working quickly to establish a recertification process for older buildings, Councilman Andy Thomson said.

“We have a number of high-rise condos on the beach, particularly. And I think that’s what causes the most heartburn for people because of the potential of corrosion due to saltwater,” Thomson said.

Steven Rogers lives at the Chalfonte condominiums in Boca Raton, where neither the city nor Palm Beach County requires building recertification. But Rogers, who was elected the condominium association president, said they’re not waiting for either to set a policy.

The association hired engineers two years ago to inspect the two 22-story towers built in the late 1970s on the Atlantic Ocean. Rogers said he called engineers again after the Surfside collapse and told them he wants an inspection policy that’s more stringent than Miami-Dade’s. The association is now making repairs with plans to do so every year.

“Do inspections that you feel are necessary, not what the city or the state feels is necessary,” Rogers said. “It’s going to take time for the city or the state to come out with new laws, and in that time, we have to move. We have to do the right things now.”

How the state will act could depend a lot on what’s learned about the Surfside collapse, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a news conference.

“We want to be able to identify, why did this happen? Is this something that was unique to this building?” DeSantis said. “Is it something that buildings of that age that would have implications beyond that, whether southern Florida or the entire state of Florida? I think we need to get those definitive answers.”

Democratic state Sen. Jason Pizzo, who represents Surfside, has indicated he’ll seek legislation to address condominium inspections when lawmakers return to Tallahassee in January.

“We’re going to be pushing for a few new provisions in FL condo law (like we have for the last three years). In the interim, condo associations must comply with existing laws and serious structural deficiencies, so our residents are not uprooted and forced to sleep in shelters,” Pizzo recently tweeted.

Escambia County, which includes Pensacola Beach, has no recertification program for older high-rises, and Building Services Director Tim Tolbert said the area will probably wait to see if a statewide code is enacted.

“I think it will be more enforceable that way,” Tolbert said. “Even if that’s a requirement and an association refuses to do anything, what do you do? If you go to condemn the building, you’re talking about major lawsuits. It’s just going to be tough to enforce even if it’s a state requirement.”

Duane Michael Wagner Vero Beach

Ryan Specialty expects $1.27B net proceeds from IPO

Tuesday, July 13, 2021 4:38 AM ET

By  Katherine Dela Cruz
Market Intelligence

Ryan Specialty Group Holdings Inc. is offering 56,918,278 class A common shares in its IPO at an estimated price of between $22.00 and $25.00 per share.

Ryan Specialty Group Holdings expects net proceeds of about $1.27 billion from the IPO, based on an assumed price of $23.50 per share, which is the midpoint of the price range.

The underwriters have the option to purchase up to an additional 8,537,742 class A common shares at the IPO price less underwriting discounts and commissions.

The net proceeds from the IPO will be largely used to fund transactions related to the formation of the organizational structure of Ryan Specialty Group Holdings, whose sole asset will be units of Ryan Specialty Group LLC. Ryan Specialty Group Holdings will become the holding company and sole managing member of Ryan Specialty Group LLC following the consummation of the offering.

Ryan Specialty Group Holdings applied to list the common shares on the NYSE under the symbol RYAN.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Barclays Capital Inc., Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and Wells Fargo Securities are the joint lead bookrunning managers, while UBS Securities LLC, William Blair & Co. LLC, RBC Capital Markets LLC, BMO Capital Markets Corp. and Keefe Bruyette & Woods Inc. are the bookrunning managers for the offering.

Dowling & Partners Securities LLC, Nomura Securities International Inc., Capital One Securities Inc., CIBC Capital Markets Corp., Loop Capital Markets LLC, PNC Capital Markets LLC, Samuel A. Ramirez & Co. Inc. and Siebert Williams Shank & Co. LLC are the co-managers.

Michael Wagner Vero Beach Florida

Olympics crowd ban could cost reinsurers up to $400m: Fitch

• 

12th July 2021 – Author: Matt Sheehan

Japan’s decision to bar spectators from the Tokyo Olympics is likely to cost the global reinsurance sector between $300 million and $400 million due to payouts for ticket and hospitality refunds, according to Fitch Ratings.

However, the rating agency notes that this total is only 10%–15% of the amount reinsurers would have faced had the Olympics been cancelled, and its impact on earnings should be limited, leaving capital and ratings unaffected.

Fitch estimates the total insurance cover for the Olympics to be about $2.5 billion, comprising $1.4 billion taken out by the International Olympic Committee and the Tokyo Organising Committee, $800 million by broadcasters and $300 million by other parties, such as sports teams, sponsors and hospitality.

Of these costs, reinsurers are expected to absorb the majority, given that that high-severity exposures are typically heavily reinsured.

While this years’ delayed Olympic Games is still set to go ahead, albeit without any spectators, a majority of reinsurance industry participants have been expecting a cancellation of the event in recent weeks, a Reinsurance News poll shows.

Cancellation of the Olympics would have led to the largest ever insured losses from a single event cancellation, adding to pressure on reinsurers’ earnings from the pandemic and US casualty reserve deficiencies, and following several years of high natural catastrophe losses, analysts at Fitch contend.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has taken out around $800 million in event-cancellation insurance, with additional cover purchased by the local organising committee, and analysis from Bloomberg Intelligence has previously suggested that the insured cost of cancellation would be in the $2 billion to $3 billion range.

The pandemic has highlighted how mass cancellations can happen simultaneously due to a single trigger, with even mega events, such as the Olympics, potentially at risk.

“The pandemic has led the insurance market to generally stop offering cover for losses resulting from communicable diseases, although cover for event cancellation due to other causes is still available as before,” Fitch stated. “We believe cyber risk could give rise to the next widespread catastrophe losses triggered by a single event, which could lead insurers and reinsurers to rethink the cyber cover they provide.”

Renewed insurance policies for event cancellation now exclude cover for losses due to communicable diseases, which should shield insurers and reinsurers from losses resulting from further lockdowns to fight the coronavirus pandemic or future pandemics.

However, event cancellation policies are typically multi-year, so it will take time for the existing risk exposures to run off.

Duane Michael Wagner II

Aon sees European storms as costliest ever, US $4.5bn+ industry loss

• 

Reinsurance News 12th July 2021 – Author: Steve Evans

Recent severe thunderstorms, convective weather, rainfall, flooding and a tornado that impacted Europe in June is expected to aggregate to at least a US $4.5 billion insurance and reinsurance market loss, making it the most costly episode on record.

This is according to broker Aon’s Impact Forecasting unit, who said that the severe weather that impacted Western and Central Europe from June 17th through the end of the month will

Severe convective weather, thunderstorms and in particular hail storms have become increasing contributors to insurance and reinsurance losses in Europe, in recent years perhaps generating similar losses on aggregate as the winter windstorm season.

We’d previously reported soon after the event that an actuarial group estimated the storms cost at least EUR 2.5bn.

Aon’s Impact Forecasting breaks the severe storms into two specific periods of weather.

First, an outbreak from June 17-25 that mostly impacted the Czech Republic, Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria.

This outbreak included the powerful F4 tornado that caused devastating impacts in the Czech region of South Moravia.

Widespread hail, wind and flood damage impacted many other parts of Europe, with the total insurance market impact expected to exceed US $3.4 billion, with economic losses reaching even higher.

Severe weather returned to Central Europe on June 28-30, as large hail caused damage in central Switzerland and Austria, while many parts of Germany experienced flooding.

Total aggregated insurance impacts from the severe convective storms outbreaks between June 17 and 30 represent “the costliest stretch of severe weather in European history and fifth costliest globally, with combined losses preliminarily estimated by the national insurance sectors at $4.5 billion, surpassing the previous European record of $4.3 billion set by storm Andreas in 2013,” Impact Forecasting explained.

Insurance companies in Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic recorded their costliest stretches of severe weather on record, while Germany experienced the second costliest, the company also noted.

Michal Lörinc, senior catastrophe analyst for Aon’s Impact Forecasting team, commented, “While the United States generates most headlines given the frequency and aggregated high financial costs associated with severe thunderstorm outbreaks, other parts of the world are also prone to such events.

“The extended stretch of severe weather in the second half of June across Western and Central Europe featured very large hail, flash floods, and one of the most intense tornadoes recorded in the recent European record. Multi-billion-dollar insured thunderstorm outbreaks are not regularly common in Europe, but they can and do happen.”