The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) launched today a Catastrophe Data Hub at its Sustainable Finance Conference 2023. The Catastrophe Data Hub is an open-source collection of catastrophe risk data at European level. As global temperatures rise and the nature of threats evolves, such losses are expected to increase in the coming years. Moreover, this also heightens the likelihood of the already substantial insurance protection gap expanding further.
The Catastrophe Data Hub provides European-wide data on insured losses for three different events: the 2017 wildfire in Portugal, the June 2013 floods and the 2020 windstorm Ciara, as well as exposure data for natural catastrophes for windstorm and flood. The data will serve as a valuable source of information for:
– Supervisors to understand the size of the insurance exposure and natural catastrophe losses, assess capital requirement calibrations and quantify the insurance protection gap. In addition, the data will be useful for financial stability and supervisory analyses.
– Insurance sector to benefit from access to loss data and having a complete view of the market. This will also foster further development of catastrophe models.
– Policy and decision-makers for taking adequate prevention measures and academics to develop independent models and studies on the increase of losses due to climate change.
Collecting and enabling more and better climate-related risks and loss data is part of EIOPA’s activities as a centre of excellence for catastrophe modelling and data.
In her opening speech, Petra Hielkema, Chairperson of EIOPA, said: ‘Open access to data and models are necessary to improve sustainability risk assessment. As a centre of excellence in data and cat modelling, EIOPA will continue to support the European supervisors and insurers with expertise, studies, tools and data. This will enable better assessment and supervision of catastrophe risks.’
EIOPA as a centre of excellence for catastrophe modelling and data allows national and European public authorities to gain a common understanding of catastrophe risks, take preventive measures and address the insurance protection gap. Lastly, it improves public awareness of risks related to catastrophes.