According to the French insurance lobby France Assureurs, home insurance premiums already increased by 7.8 percent in 2025, while the climate disaster premium — which doesn’t cover wildfires — rose by 66 percent.
For now, most French residents can still easily obtain home insurance anywhere in mainland France, according to the public reinsurer. But it is seeing early signs of strain in a few cities, where insurance is becoming harder to obtain, or increasingly unaffordable.
Bit by bit, such trends push the cost of insurance beyond what businesses or households can afford, leading to an ever-wider ‘protection gap’. Around half of global economic losses from natural disasters were uninsured last year, according to insurance giant Aon.
“There is a real risk that this already sizeable gap could widen further as natural catastrophes increase, with serious consequences for people’s daily lives and for economic activity in affected regions,” said Petra Hielkema, who chairs EIOPA, during a conference on climate risk last April.
As a result, governments often have no choice but to act as a backstop, increasing public spending and debt, according to a recent study by the Network for Greening the Financial System, which brings together central banks and financial supervisors from across the world.
“The negative effects are felt via a higher cost of insurance coverage in following years, or higher public debt,” said the report, which identified negative financial consequences of recent natural catastrophes on GDP, inflation and the credit system.
