One Winter of Storms Pushed Home and Fire Insurance Payouts to 123% of Premiums, the Regulator's Second-Quarter Report Shows

Portugal's insurance supervisor published its second-quarter market report on Friday, and inside a set of otherwise strong numbers sits one that is not: in the Incêndio e Outros Danos (Fire and Other Damage) branch, which is where household multi-risk cover lives, the amounts paid out to policyholders in the first half of 2026 came to 123.2% of the premiums collected.

That ratio was 46.2% a year earlier. The 77-percentage-point jump is the direct accounting consequence of what the Autoridade de Supervisão de Seguros e Fundos de Pensões (Insurance and Pension Funds Supervisory Authority, or ASF) calls the "comboio de tempestades", the train of storms that crossed the country in the opening months of the year. Payouts in the branch rose 195.1%.

The rest of the report is a growth story

Direct insurance production in Portugal reached €9.423 billion in the first half, up 18.1% on the same point in 2025. The Life branch grew 27.5% to €4.961 billion and the Non-Life branches 9.2% to €4.462 billion. Domestic companies wrote 91.6% of it.

Within Life, the composition has shifted sharply. Non-linked policies excluding Planos Poupança Reforma (Retirement Savings Plans, or PPR) grew 59.8% to €2.868 billion, while PPR products across both linked and non-linked forms fell 29.3%. Savers, in other words, are still putting money into insurance-wrapped products, but away from the retirement-labelled ones. Surrenders rose 8.5% and accounted for 48.2% of everything paid out on Life policies, down from 52% a year earlier.

Motor premiums rose 10.6%, and that branch's paid-to-premiums ratio actually improved by a percentage point, to 64.5%. Fire and Other Damage premiums also rose 10.6%, which was nowhere near enough to keep pace with the claims.

Profit and solvency

The ASF estimates net results across the companies under its prudential supervision at about €461 million for the period, a figure that excludes two entities, GamaLife and MGEN. Investment portfolios stood at €59 billion at the end of June, up 4.4% on the end of last year, against technical provisions of €50.7 billion.

The capital ratios softened but stayed comfortable. Coverage of the Solvency Capital Requirement came in at 198%, down 14 percentage points from December 2025, with Life insurers at 233%, Non-Life at 174% and composites at 193%. Coverage of the Minimum Capital Requirement fell 37 points to 523%. Both sit far above the regulatory floor of 100%.

What this means for households

• Expect your multi-risco habitação renewal to rise. Riscos Múltiplos policies make up 89.5% of the branch, and household cover alone is 57.5% of it. A branch that paid out more than it took in does not hold prices flat the following year.
• Read the wind and flood clauses, not the headline price. Storm damage claims turn on definitions: wind speed thresholds, whether water entered from above or below, and whether outbuildings and solar panels are named.
• Mortgage-linked policies are not automatically the cheapest. The cover bundled by a lender can be switched to another insurer, and this is the year to compare.
• Motor is the calmer market. With the loss ratio improving, there is less pressure on car premiums than there was when they surged 11.4% in early 2026.
• Flat owners have a structural problem the numbers do not show. Condominium managers have asked for one policy per building rather than one per flat, precisely because the storms exposed how slowly split cover settles.

The wider argument this feeds into is about who carries catastrophe risk. Portugal's Ombudsman has already urged the creation of a national catastrophe fund, and the government has floated mandatory catastrophe cover. A single winter that turned one branch's loss ratio inside out is the strongest evidence yet offered for either.