More than half of all home insurance claims last year from water damage: Aviva Canada

More than half of all home insurance claims last year involved water damage, an water damage claims payouts rose 69% over 2012, Aviva Canada said Tuesday.

“With last year’s storms, water damage reached an all time high making up 51% of all Aviva Canada property claims,” Wayne Ross, vice president of property claims for Aviva Canada said in a press release.

“The flooding in Alberta and Toronto certainly played a big part in the increase, but the general trend is upward. And as severe weather events are growing in frequency, we expect to see more situations like this in the future.”

The company paid out $190 million in water damage claims last year. Even without the Alberta and Toronto area events, water damage would still have made up 40% of all of Aviva Canada’s property claims, it noted.

Its data also showed that in 2013, the average cost of a water damage claim rose to $20,537, a 130% increase versus the $8,944 that the company experienced 10 years earlier. Even with the flooding catastrophes removed, the figures have trended higher for a number of years, the company said.

“The reasons for the upward trend are rather simple,” Ross added. “The increasing investment Canadians are putting into their basements, combined with more frequent severe weather events and an aging sewer system that is unable to deal with large amounts of water within a short time period, results in a lot of homes experiencing damage.”