Allianz Commercial: average business interruption claim now exceeds €850,000, about 70% more than the property damage

Allianz Commercial published an analysis on 8 October of 7,888 business interruption (BI) insurance industry claims from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2025. The claims have a total value of about €6.74bn (US$7.82bn). The insurer says the average BI claim now exceeds €850,000. The average property damage claim linked to these losses is close to €500,000, so the cost of lost operations is about 70% higher than the cost of the physical repair.

The number of claims stayed relatively stable, but their average value rose by more than 30% a year during the past two years. Fire and explosion was the most expensive cause, at more than 40% of total value, or about €2.9bn. Fire caused nine of the 10 costliest man-made BI events in the dataset, and the two costliest non-catastrophe events were fires at semiconductor plants. In one case, a fire with limited physical damage at a small manufacturing unit led to a nine-figure BI loss across the group.

Natural catastrophes were the second most expensive cause, at 34% of value, and the most frequent, at 26% of claims. Events without natural catastrophe activity still produced 74% of claims and 66% of value. Allianz says some catastrophe claims now take longer to settle: two years after Hurricane Helene in September 2024, many related BI claims remained open because the companies had not yet fully recovered, not because of coverage disputes.

The report also points to cyber and technology dependence. Ransomware remains the main cyber cause of disruption, but cloud outages, software failures and incidents at third-party providers add a growing share; more than 48,000 outages in cloud and software services were tracked in 2025. Allianz warns that declared values may be too low after inflation and longer recoveries. Chief executive Thomas Lillelund said the scale of physical damage alone "no longer determines" the final cost of an interruption.