Brantford Floods Could Cause Insurance Losses of Tens of Millions of Dollars

Aon Benfield says it expects the insured losses from Brantford floods to be in tens of millions of dollars. The southern Ontario town of Brantford has already been hit by severe floods and Canada is preparing for another year of cat events with flooding continuing to be the chief concern.

The company's Impact Forecasting team used its catastrophe modeling technology to estimate the total. Aon's prediction matches an earlier $25 million loss estimate made by Catastrophe Indices and Quantification Inc. (CatIQ) in late February. However, the CatIQ prediction did not take into account continued losses that have extended into March.

Southern Ontario has been hit by heavy rainfall over the last month, focused mostly on the Brantford and Waterloo areas. 5,000 people were evacuated from their homes after ice jams and broken river banks caused overland flooding.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) has already said the flooding highlights the problems Canadian insurers face, calling the water a "wakeup call". Companies offer water damage cover but will need further help from the government, the IBC said.

"It was obvious from those conversations that there was a whole range of water damage that people suffered," said Pete Karageorgos, IBC's director of consumer and industry relations in Ontario. "In some cases, people had water in their basement, but there was no water around the outside of their homes. In other cases, they were immediately beside the river that in some spots the water there overflowed from the breakwall, which is fairly high up."

The city has reported "at least 30-50 homes in the assessment area have confirmed water infiltration – verification will follow once inspections are fully completed as several properties still need to be entered."

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