Residential buildings in Germany are in future to be insured as standard against natural hazards such as flooding, heavy rain or earthquakes. That is provided for in key points for a draft law presented by the Federal Ministry of Finance under Lars Klingbeil and the Federal Ministry of Justice under Stefanie Hubig, as tagesschau.de reports. The “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger” had first reported on it; the paper is also available to the news agency dpa.
Accordingly, newly concluded insurance policies for residential buildings are in future to cover further natural hazards as standard. In the event of damage, owners would under the key points have to bear at most 20,000 euros themselves. Existing building insurance policies are to be extendable.
“Experts expect that extreme weather caused by climate change will cause major damage to houses even more often. We therefore need nationwide insurance cover for elemental damage,” Hubig told the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger”. At the same time, the cover for owners and tenants must remain affordable.
Until now, elemental damage has been covered only through an additional insurance module. According to the Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft (GDV), 98 per cent of all residential buildings are insured against fire, storm or hail, but only 59 per cent also against events such as floods or landslides. On average, these cause damage of around two billion euros per year in Germany.
“It is right to ensure that more buildings are insured against natural hazards,” said GDV chief executive Jörg Asmussen. A mandatory insurance scheme, however, does not prevent a single loss. “So that elemental cover remains affordable even in 20 years, we therefore need binding prevention and a state reinsurance scheme for extreme natural disasters at the same time, as the coalition agreement expressly provides for.”
