Natural disasters returned from the 1er January at the forefront of French news with the return of floods in Hauts-de-France, which led the government and insurers, even before estimating the cost, to announce exceptional measures, such as the removal of the franchise for victims already affected by the same phenomenon in the fall.
The total bill for the first episode of flooding in the region, in November 2023, is estimated at 550 million euros, compared to 1.3 billion for the Ciaran and Domingos storms of October-November and 350 million for the earthquake. land in western France in June.
The list is far from complete but the cost of natural disasters in France for 2023 will certainly not reach that of 2022, a year marked by a “climate bill” of 10.6 billion euros, unprecedented for more than twenty years, with, among other things, episodes of exceptional hail and drought.
Increase in surcharges
Another positive point in the results of the past year: the French natural disaster compensation system will finally benefit from the financial reinforcement that it has been waiting for for years. The Ministry of the Economy announced on December 28, 2023 that the “surcharges” on insurance contracts, which finance the natural disaster compensation scheme, would increase on 1er January 2025. The rate of this compulsory contribution will increase from 12% to 20% for home insurance contracts and from 6% to 9% for automobile insurance contracts.
Enough to ensure the Cat Nat regime, in deficit in seven of the last eight years and whose reserves have fallen to less than 2 billion euros, an additional compensation capacity of 1.2 billion euros per year.
“The objective is not only to be in balance, but also to generate sufficient profitability for CCR’s reserves to increase. We should thus regain in principle in less than ten years the capacity to absorb much larger shocks, corresponding to events which only occur every forty years on average. explains Edouard Vieillefond, the general director of CCR, the public reinsurer responsible for managing the scheme.
Second source of concern for the French
The increase in surcharges represents a contribution of around twenty euros per French household on average. An effort that is all the more acceptable in the eyes of the profession as recent years have increased public awareness of the issues linked to climate risks.
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