Your Uninsurable Home? What Is Climate Change’s Wild Weather Doing To Insurance?

Across Canada, this year has brought severe storms, floods, wildfires and other catastrophic weather. As people in Calgary, Toronto and other hard hit areas try to rebuild their lives, most of them expect that someone should help them pay for the damage. Oil-rich Alberta has promised $1 billion to support the first phase of recovery and reconstruction. (The actual cost is likely to be much more.) But most people, in most places, need to rely on insurance when disaster strikes. What will happen when they cannot get it?

For the last decade, property insurers have been leading business voices about the urgency of climate change, because they bear the brunt of catastrophic weather sooner than most other businesses. The year is less than two thirds through, but Canada's largest insurer, Intact, is already predicting hundreds of millions of dollars in after tax losses. This will make 2013 one of the costliest years ever for severe weather claims.