Certain French territories exposed to natural disasters run the risk of not being able to be insured, mainly due to climate change, warned on Thursday, October 16, SCET, a subsidiary of the Caisse des Dépôts (CDC), specialized in advising communities.
The territories, not just those located on the coast, “run the risk of becoming uninsurable, and the companies and individuals present in these territories will feel the effects as well as the communities,” warns the SCET in a white paper titled “The insurability of the territories, a matter of State.”
The SCET details the market that it knows well: that of municipal insurance, weakened for two and a half years by the consequences of global warming and episodes of urban violence. The only two players present in this market are Groupama and Smacl, a subsidiary of the mutual insurance company MAIF, which was on the verge of bankruptcy at the end of 2023.
5,100 highly exposed municipalities
Since this period, the SCET has reported a “sharp increase in insurance premiums (multiplied by 2 to 4 depending on the municipality), often accompanied by a reduction in guarantees”, “unilateral contract terminations” by insurers, “sometimes without justification and with insufficient notice periods”, as well as an “impossibility” for certain municipalities to find a new insurer, “due to the lack of response to tenders”.
Furthermore, the CDC subsidiary estimates that today 5,100 municipalities “accumulate high exposure to growing climate risks” and a tense financial situation. To limit this “double penalty”, the SCET recalls the importance of risk prevention and advocates, among other things, the creation of local or regional “captive insurance”, a self-insurance system that would give communities the possibility of setting aside funds to compensate for future losses, and for better supervision of the market by public authorities.
The Government returned to the issue and, after a report published in 2024 on the insurability of communities, announced in April 2025 the launch of “a community support unit” headed by the insurance mediator. The cost of climate phenomena in France reached five billion euros for insurers in 2024, less than the average for the period 2020-2024 (5.6 billion), but much more than the average for the years 1982-1989 (1.5 billion).
Source: BFM TV
