Authors: Emma Bergin Timothy Fewtrell
In recent years, flood risk has been reshaped by multiple forces. More erratic rainfall and heavier precipitation, combined with rapid floodplain development and land use change, is driving coastal storm surge, river overflows and pluvial inundation (rainfall-driven flooding). The peril is also expanding beyond the areas traditionally considered susceptible — as we saw in the Middle East floods in 2024 in particular.
The impact of this evolving atmosphere is already tangible. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, unusually heavy rainfall led to flooding across parts of Europe, northern and southern Africa and the Middle East. Some affected regions received nearly a year's worth of rain in just a few days, according to an analysis in Gallagher Re's Q1 2026 Natural Catastrophe and Climate Report.
Over the next five years, precipitation patterns are expected to become more polarized, with heavier rainfall in parts of northern Africa, northern Europe, Alaska and Siberia, and unusually dry conditions in others that have historically received abundant rainfall.1
This evolving atmosphere brings both resilience and insurance challenges. Areas unaccustomed to flooding are now more exposed, but often lack adequate defenses, drainage systems and insurance penetration. Pluvial flooding in particular is exposing vulnerabilities in older housing stock and infrastructure that can be difficult and costly to retrofit.
To help clients navigate the changing dynamics of flooding, Gallagher Re appointed Dr. Emma Bergin as Global Flood Peril Lead in January 2026. Drawing on her expertise in hydrology, climate science and catastrophe modeling, Bergin provides insight into evolving flood risk and what this means for Gallagher Re's global property client base.
Bergin is part of the Global Property Research team's network of specialists covering floods, tropical cyclones, wildfires and severe convective storms. Combining scientific expertise and industry experience, each of these peril leads is responsible for broad technical oversight and delivering client insights in their respective fields. Presiding over model development and model evaluation projects, they support carriers in making informed decisions in underwriting, pricing, accumulation management and reinsurance placement.
In this interview with Timothy Fewtrell, Gallagher Re's Head of EMEA Catastrophe Analytics, Dr. Bergin discusses the evolution of flood risk and how advances in modeling, exposure data and resilience planning can help the insurance market better manage this peril.
Tim Fewtrell (TF): How have flood patterns been evolving in recent years?
Emma Bergin (EB): Flood risk is increasing in frequency, severity and geographic spread because hazard and exposure are changing together. Over the last five to ten years, heavier rainfall has become more prominent, but the impact of those events is also being shaped by where people build, how cities drain surface water, which flood defenses are in place, and whether buildings have been designed or adapted for flood resilience.
Pluvial flooding is a key example of this interaction. Unlike fluvial flooding, which occurs when rivers exceed their banks, pluvial flooding can occur away from rivers when intense rainfall overwhelms drainage systems and water accumulates around buildings.
This makes it particularly challenging in dense urban areas in Europe and in arid, drought-prone parts of Africa and the Middle East, where exposure is concentrated and traditional flood defenses may be less effective or absent altogether.
Similarly, in North America, Brazil and China, tropical cyclones are a major driver of storm surge and inland flooding, but the extent of inundation is also influenced by urban development and land use change.
Floods are also more localized than many other perils, meaning two properties on the same street can experience significantly different outcomes. Elevation, drainage, building design, proximity to a watercourse, the presence of a basement, and resilience measures can all influence whether flood damage occurs. Other factors, including the height of electrical sockets, the presence of air bricks or temporary barriers, and local drainage conditions, can determine whether a property experiences minor disruption or significant damage.
This local variability adds another layer of complexity to flood risk assessment and loss management.
TF: As flood risk becomes more frequent, localized and less predictable, what are the biggest challenges for insurers in underwriting the peril?
EB: Flood risk can emerge in areas with little or no recent flood history, making it difficult to predict, map and insure.
Even where flood maps exist, evolving patterns such as pluvial flooding can leave them outdated. In the US, for example, banks and lenders use Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) maps to determine where flood insurance is required, yet many properties remain exposed because those maps do not always capture the full extent of risk.
This gap presents challenges for insurers and homeowners alike, contributing to low levels of flood insurance penetration in some markets.
Flood is also becoming a significant driver of losses within other catastrophe perils, further complicating underwriting. Gallagher Re's Q1 Nat Cat report, for instance, found that while European windstorms generated the highest economic losses from the peril since 1999, a substantial share of those losses was flood related.
TF: How is flood catastrophe modeling keeping up with the changing nature of the peril?
EB: Flood modeling has advanced considerably in recent years, particularly in its ability to capture highly localized risk. Using sophisticated satellite observations, global datasets and climate scenario analysis, models can now operate at resolutions of five to ten meters, providing a more granular view of flood exposure, especially for pluvial flooding, where losses can vary significantly between neighboring streets.
The vendor landscape has also expanded, with specialist firms drawing on expertise in hydrology, hydraulics, flood mapping and advanced datasets to develop dedicated flood models.
Even so, a more precise view of where water may go does not automatically translate into certainty about loss. The remaining challenge is often the vulnerability of the building itself: whether the property has a basement, what materials and services are exposed, whether property-level resilience measures are in place, and whether those attributes are captured accurately in the exposure data. In some markets, this has created a gap between underwriting assessments and reinsurance pricing.
Experts may default to model comparisons to navigate this challenge, but ambiguities remain around how each model defines the peril. Some classify flooding from smaller catchments as pluvial rather than fluvial, while others define events according to the dominant source of loss. As a result, different vendors can reach different conclusions about the same event.
Positively, these complications are driving investment in richer datasets, including building footprints and enhanced property-level information. At Gallagher Re, we combine these new data insights and emerging flood modeling tools with our extensive market expertise to help our clients develop a comprehensive view of their flood exposure.
TF: You recently joined Gallagher Re as Global Flood Peril Lead. What attracted you to the role?
EB: My background gives me a fairly unusual vantage point on the peril. I started my career as a hydrologist at the Environment Agency in North Wales, working directly with river systems and seeing how catchments respond to rainfall in practice. Later, I completed a master's in hydrology and climate change at Newcastle University and a PhD at Imperial College London, where my research focused on downscaling and the space-time dimensions of climate and reanalysis models. That took me from well-instrumented UK catchments to more data-sparse regions in South America, and later to postdoctoral work on land-use change in the Ganges Basin.
I then held a position at Flood Re, the UK's government-backed reinsurance pool for flooding. This role gave me insurance experience and exposure to catastrophe model evaluation, regulatory approval, analytics and communications.
The opportunity at Gallagher Re appealed to me because I wanted to maximize the opportunity to bring together the different threads of my career — hydrology, climate science, catastrophe modeling and insurance strategy — and apply them at a global level. This combination of technical depth and industry experience is what I aim to bring to the peril lead role: understanding both what the science is telling us, and how those insights can support underwriting and reinsurance decision-making.
TF: Why is now the right time for a dedicated Global Flood Peril Lead, and what does the role involve?
EB: Gallagher Re recognizes that a lot of property perils have no borders, impacting most countries worldwide. As a result, its Global Property Practice brings together capabilities across the UK, EMEA, Americas and Asia Pacific to create a more globally coordinated approach to property risk. The peril lead structure is central to this initiative, translating technical analysis into insights that clients can use.
The role and the team covers the full breadth of (re)insurance risk analysis, including catastrophe model development and evaluation for reinsurance buying and accumulation management; risk scoring tools for underwriting decisions; and advisory work to support regulatory requirements and bespoke growth objectives. These actionable insights help clients to better understand exposure, identify growth opportunities and make more informed risk-transfer decisions.
In addition, as we've discussed already, flood is a global issue with very regionalized differences. Having a dedicated peril lead allows Gallagher Re to connect science, modeling, and commercial decision-making consistently worldwide, while providing tailored insights to account for geographical nuances.
TF: How is Gallagher Re helping clients navigate flood risk?
EB: Broadly, Gallagher Re's flood capabilities support clients throughout the risk-transfer process, from underwriting to reinsurance purchasing, on a global scale.
For flood (and other property perils), accurately representing risk is essential to managing it effectively. To that end, improved flood analytics can identify growing exposures, insufficient defenses and property-level vulnerabilities. The resulting flood models and risk scores can support more than pricing alone: improved underwriting accuracy, portfolio growth, mitigation and reinsurance decisions.
At Gallagher Re, we leverage advanced flood analytics and risk capabilities to help clients across both underserved and mature markets. For example, our recently developed Europe Flood Model, which uses advanced flood hazard data from KatRisk, provides comprehensive flood coverage across Europe. The model maps potential flood events at high resolution and helps clients estimate economic and insured losses under current and future climate conditions.
We are also developing flood risk scores in South America, initially focused on Brazil and Chile. These scores provide a more consistent view of flood exposure across a region that has historically lacked advanced flood analytics, supporting risk selection, underwriting and portfolio growth decisions.
Beyond this, we contribute to developing innovative flood solutions, including parametric products and public-private partnerships in regions where traditional approaches may not adequately address emerging risks.
TF: What roles are innovative risk-transfer solutions and public-private partnerships playing in managing future flood risk?
EB: They play an important role in managing future risks by improving access to coverage, enhancing resilience and helping communities recover more quickly after flood events.
On the risk-transfer side, parametric insurance is gaining traction as an alternative approach to flood cover. Under this model, payouts are linked to predefined triggers such as rainfall intensity or river levels, enabling a faster and more efficient response to flood events.
Public-private partnerships are also coming to the forefront, particularly as insurers develop a clearer understanding of flood exposure and higher-risk areas, which can in turn create challenges around the affordability and availability of coverage.
Often specifically designed with climate-driven catastrophe perils in mind, PPPs and national pools are becoming a central tool for managing volatile risks and strengthening economic resilience — helping governments manage fiscal shocks, protecting households and businesses, supporting continuity of critical services and mobilizing private capital at a scale that public budgets alone cannot deliver. More broadly, these arrangements can complement private-market solutions by balancing risk-based pricing with wider resilience and protection objectives.
Some of these PPP initiatives have been in existence for some time now, such as Flood Re in the UK, the Caisse Centrale de Réassurance in France, and the National Flood Insurance Program in the US, while other countries, such as Germany, are actively exploring their own initiatives.
We are also seeing innovation in catastrophe bonds and other alternative risk-transfer structures, alongside growing interest in directly incentivizing resilience measures — initiatives that encourage risk reduction before a loss occurs. For example, flood-resilience certificates for homes, similar to energy performance certificates, could help recognize and reward investments in flood mitigation, creating stronger incentives for homeowners and businesses to improve resilience.
Importantly, risk transfer alone is not a substitute for mitigation. Long-term resilience will depend on continued investment in flood defenses, urban drainage systems, property-level resilience measures and planning decisions that reduce vulnerability. As flood risk evolves, the most effective approach will be one that combines risk transfer, adaptation and resilience measures.
TF: Finally, as flood risks themselves are being reframed, how can insurers help build their long-term resilience to the risk?
EB: Overall, I think building resilience to flood perils starts with insurers asking themselves:
- Where is exposure growing?
- Which regions lack adequate modeling?
- Where are public-private partnerships needed?
- How should portfolios be priced and managed as urban flooding exposures evolve?
- How can insurance support adaptation rather than simply respond after a loss?
Answering these questions will require insurers to look beyond historical loss experience and embrace a more forward-looking view of flood risk. This means combining advanced analytics with a deeper understanding of resilience, adaptation and emerging exposures, and partnering with specialists like those at Gallagher Re to unlock some of these answers.
It's also key to note that working with partners across the risk ecosystem, from governments and communities to risk advisors and model providers, will play an increasingly important role in improving insurability in a changing climate.
