“hundreds of millions of euros” in compensation claims, according to Bruno Le Maire

Storms Ciaran and Domingos continue to make headlines. The Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, estimated on Tuesday November 7 on the BTMTV and RMC channels that “hundreds of millions of euros” the amount that claims for compensation made to insurers could reach, specifying that 120,000 claims had already been filed.

There is “still undoubtedly many requests which have not been made quite simply because the electricity is cut, because the telephone has not yet been restored”, he added. According to the insurance consultancy Saretec, storms Ciaran and Domingos could have caused 300,000 claims at a cost of between 650 and 750 million euros. Figures that can still evolve.

A balance to qualify

The storms Lothar and Martin, which swept across France at the end of December 1999, caused damage which cost insurers 7 billion euros. Taking into account inflation, this is today equivalent to 13.8 billion euros, according to France Assureurs. “We are very far from the billions of euros of the 1999 storm”, therefore tempered the minister, who received the insurers in Bercy on Monday. More recently, the damage from storm Alex, which devastated the hinterland of Nice and Menton on October 2, 2020, was estimated at more than a billion euros.