Natural event-related damages include damages that occur during extreme weather conditions such as storms, heavy rainfall, floods, landslides, and avalanches.
In 2022, nearly 18,000 natural event-related damages occurred in Sweden, covered by insurance, with the vast majority (10,000 damages) caused by storms. In total, insurance companies paid out over 1 billion SEK in compensation for natural event-related damages in 2022. The costs for damages caused by natural events were at its highest in 2005 followed by 2021. In 2005, the storm called “Gudrun” caused significant damage in the southern part of Sweden and insurance companies paid out a total of 3.8 bil-lion SEK in compensation for natural event-related damages that year. In 2021, the county of Gävleborg was particularly affected by damages caused by heavy rainfall resulting in floods.
Over time, there is a risk that the number of natural event-related damages will increase as the effects of the climate change become more pronounced. The number of natural event-related damages varies greatly, not only be-tween years but also between different geographical areas. It can take a long time for one area to be affected again after experiencing such damages.
During the period 2015-2022, insurance companies paid out compensation for a total of 133,700 natural event-related damages. This amounts to an av-erage of 16,700 damages per year during that period. These damages were caused by storms, floods, landslides, rockfalls, earthquakes, erosion, settle-ments due to lowered groundwater levels, hail, snow pressure, avalanches, and more. The cost of these damages amounted to over 8.1 billion SEK, aver-aging to slightly over 1 billion SEK per year. Since the number of natural event-related damages varies between years, the paid claims amount for property damages also varies.
The most affected municipalities in Sweden during the period 2015-2022 are Gävle, followed by Stockholm and Sandviken. The paid claims amounts are highest in areas with a higher concentration of residential and other struc-tures. The high claims amount for Gävle and Sandviken are primarily due to the heavy rainfall that occurred in 2021, resulting in extensive flooding and damage to residentials and commercial properties. Gävle municipality accounted for half of the total amount of paid claims in 2021.
