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Over the next week, super heavy showers are set to hit the Indian subcontinent, especially in the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, South Interior Karnataka, Konkan and Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Arunachal Pradesh, and Gujarat, the IMD (<keyword id="19963725" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="Indian-Meteorological-Department" source="keywords" meta.keywordsubtype="org" meta.entityname="Indian Meteorological Department" meta.hostid="261" meta.entityid="Indian Meteorological Department">Indian Meteorological Department</keyword>) has predicted. Yesterday, India's financial capital, Mumbai was hit by a surprise, albeit hefty deluge of rain. Consequently, a yellow alert was issued for Thane, Pune, Palghar and other areas near to Mumbai. Between October 13-16, very heavy rainfalls are also expected in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. It's no secret that incessant rains also bring about significant economic damages. As seen very often in the past, a constant barrage of torrential rains can also quickly create a flood-like situation, which can wipe away houses, vehicles and everything that comes in its way. Per media reports, the average economic impact on India due to <keyword id="19912527" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="floods" source="keywords">floods</keyword> between 2011 and 2021 has been a staggering Rs 25,805 crore. Imagine this-your entire se is flooded. Water has seeped into everything—your walls, furniture, and even the plumbing. Without a <keyword id="22058670" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="home-insurance" source="keywords">home insurance</keyword>, you'll have to spend a hefty amount towards repairs and to get your life and home back on track. <h2>Getting your home insured</h2>So, if you are wondering how to protect your hard earned material but immovable assets like house, the answer is right in front of you- Home Insurance. Says Dilip Baba, Head of Commercial and Speciality Underwriting, Go Digit General Insurance, "People usually spend their entire life savings on purchasing a home. However, people rarely think about how to protect their investment. By investing in the safety of home insurance, you can enjoy peace of mind knowing that your property is covered in case of unforeseen events. With home insurance, you can opt for three types of coverage-structure, content and comprehensive. While structure simply insures the physical, immovable formation of your house (walls, roofs), content coverage goes a step ahead and takes care of damage caused to your movable items like furniture, electronics and other items due to natural calamities, theft and more, up to a certain limit. This can also include any valuable artwork or antiques, or additional installation like solar panels you might have at your home. A comprehensive home insurance brings together both structure and contents in its insurance ambit. Having a home insurance can not just protect you from natural calamities like floods, but also from unforeseen events like theft, fire and more. The annual premium of a home insurance policy can range between Rs 2,000 to Rs 10,000 depending on the type and extent of coverage taken. Before buying a policy, be sure to clarify whether it offers actual cash value, which considers depreciation, or replacement/reinstatement cost, which covers the full replacement without depreciation deductions. To be on the safe side, you can also choose additional covers like accidental death insurance, or rent coverage, if you lose out on rental income due to damage caused to your property. You can use the carpet area of your house to get a sense of your home insurance requirements. Other covers you can opt for include valuable contents (on agreed value basis under home contents cover), additional living expense cover, tenant liability insurance, among others. Says Amit Bhandari, Chief Technical Officer at Magma HDI General Insurance, "When selecting a policy, it’s crucial to assess the unique risks that your home may face, particularly if you live in an area susceptible to <keyword id="19922196" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="natural-disasters" source="keywords">natural disasters</keyword>. You should tailor your coverage to address these risks while considering premium reduction strategies, such as excluding unnecessary coverages".

Heavy rains to lash across the country between Oct 12-16, here's how you can insure your home from rain's fury

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Neither Harris nor Trump outline specific disaster-relief policies on their website.</li><li>Their records, however, offer clues into how they'd deal with natural disasters as president.</li></ul>As another <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-milton-evacuation-empty-gas-station-full-hotels-gridlock-traffic-2024-10">hurricane</a> threatens to devastate swaths of the Southeast, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump are under new scrutiny about their disaster response strategies. And though neither have specifically addressed how they'd approach disaster relief on their campaign websites, their environmental records offer clues into how they might deal with similar crises in the future.When Hurricane Helene bore down on six states, and with particular force in North Carolina and Georgia, both Harris and Trump said that the focus should be on providing aid, not politics. But the storm, which has killed more than 230 people and destroyed entire towns, has already crept into the presidential race. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-helene-milton-tampa-florida-desantis-clean-disaster-dangerous-2024-10">Hurricane Milton is expected to hit Florida</a> on Wednesday night, only exacerbating the focus on environmental devastation."Disasters are always political," Thomas Birkland, a political scientist at North Carolina State University who studies the politics of national disasters, told Business Insider. He said that disaster relief is not, however, usually <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-milton-category-five-threatens-florida-fema-funding-2024-10">discussed during campaigns</a>.Timothy Kneeland, a professor at Nazareth University who studies politics and natural disasters, thinks that as hurricanes become more common, candidates should address them more explicitly."Having a short but clear statement on disasters should be part of any campaigner's policy," he wrote in a statement to BI.Both candidates have visited impacted areas, with Trump visiting Georgia on September 30 and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/kamala-harris-donald-trump-crises-middle-east-strike-hurricane-election-2024-10">Harris on October 2</a>. Republicans criticized Harris for attending a fundraising event in California when Helene struck, while she maintained that politicians should stay out of the most devastated areas as first responders begin their early work.In the days since Hurricane Helene, Trump has spread misinformation about the storm and response efforts, prompting the Federal Emergency Management Agency to publish a fact-checking page. <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-helene-relief-disinformation-misinformation-north-carolina-democrats-republicans-2024-10">Democrats and Republicans alike</a> say that the baseless claims are complicating <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-elon-musk-starlink-hurricane-helene-fema-2024-9">clean-up efforts</a>, and Harris has put out a digital ad slamming his former disaster relief. When he was president, Trump responded to several hurricanes. As with Hurricane Helene, he <a target="_blank" class="" href="https://www.vox.com/politics/376982/trump-hurricane-helene-fema-lies-debunked">publicized</a> misinformation. When Hurricane Dorian threatened Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina, he incorrectly said that its path included Alabama as well. During a briefing in the Oval Office, he showed a map of the hurricane's path that included a Sharpie mark extending the storm's reach to Alabama. Trump also falsely claimed that the death toll from Hurricane Maria in 2017 was overblown, the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/08/trump-hurricane-helene-natural-disasters/">Washington Post reported</a>.The former president occasionally threatened to hold back disaster funding over political spats. In 2020, for example, he floated withholding money from flood-ravaged Michigan because he was frustrated with absentee voting procedures in the state."A charitable interpretation would be mixed on crisis management," Birkland told BI about Trump's past responses to natural disasters. Kneeland said that storm victims and disaster experts largely criticized his handling of Hurricane Maria.During his time in office, Trump's administration rolled back more than 125 environmental rules, the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html">Washington Post</a> found, with a big focus on deregulating the fossil fuel industry. Trump's campaign has, according to Birkland, "been pretty clear that it disdains alternative fuels."Harris doesn't have a presidential record to back up her approach to disaster relief, but Birkland anticipates she'd take a relatively similar approach to President Joe Biden.As attorney general, Harris prosecuted oil companies that broke environmental rules. During her tenure as vice president, she voted for the Inflation Reduction Act, which devoted $370 billion to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.But both Birkland and Kneeland told BI that Harris has become less aggressive about addressing climate change this election, likely in an attempt to court more moderate voters."Harris' position is a little murkier," Birkland said. "Harris has been clear that we should be doing things like alternative energy, but also supports, as of recent months, continued fossil fuel production. So it's kind of a both-and strategy."Presidents are somewhat limited in their disaster responses — both Kneeland and Birkland told BI that states and local governments lead disaster responses, with the federal government's assistance."Even when FEMA is on the ground they must work within the structure of existing state and local government," Kneeland said in his written statement. The responsibility is, he said, layered throughout the government.Regardless, all eyes are on how Harris and Trump respond to the twin storms — and the outcome of the election could theoretically hang in the balance. Kneeland said that disaster response can either greatly boost or doom an incumbent, pointing to instances as varied as Hurricane Betsey in 1965, Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.Though Birkland doesn't anticipate that the hurricanes will sway many voters, he said that even a small impact in swing states could matter."I think most people's minds are made up. I think that you're really dealing with the margins," he said. "On the other hand, this election is going to be won or lost on the margins, so that matters."

Hurricanes are taking the election by storm. Here's where Harris and Trump stand on natural disaster policies.

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Owning a home in high-climate risk states like Florida is becoming tougher amid rising costs.</li><li>Still, owning may be preferable as renters have significantly less policy support than homeowners.</li></ul>In states at high risk of climate-related events, both homeowners and renters face difficulties in the wake of natural disasters, but there are important things to consider in each case.On the one hand, buyers are facing rising costs as insurance premiums skyrocket. Renters could bear some of that burden, too, as rental properties face rising property insurance costs that could drive up rents in the future.But when a natural disaster hits, like this week's Hurricane Milton, the stakes are different.Both renters and homebuyers face an immense loss of stability if their homes are damaged or destroyed, but homebuyers lose a huge investment.Here are key factors at play when deciding to rent or to own a home in a state where climate risks are rising and natural disasters are becoming more frequent and destructive.<h3 id="fb983509-a634-4c57-8ea5-a41d41e6da00">Both renters and buyers face rising costs</h3>The costs associated with owning a home are becoming more volatile as insurance costs rise due to climate risks."Those dynamics really play more of a role in why you're seeing weaker markets right now in places like Texas and Florida, which see more severe storms and generally different forms of climate risk, and where homeowners are seeing greater increases in insurance premiums, which doesn't affect renters as much," Redfin's head economist, Chen Zhao, told Business Insider.Average insurance premiums have increased sharply in the last few years, up 33% from 2020 to 2023, but that trend is uneven depending on a state's natural disaster risk, a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32579/w32579.pdf">June study</a> found.Even in regions in different states with similar climate risks, those in states with overall higher risks often bear a higher cost burden as insurers pay to transfer more risk to reinsurance companies.Florida, which has a reinsurance exposure of almost 40% due to high hurricane risk across the state, saw annual insurance premiums increase by about $1,000 in zip codes close to its border with Georgia, even though areas on both sides of the border are similarly at risk.Georgia, on the other hand, has less than 10% exposure to reinsurers, and its zip codes close to the border saw increases of less than $500 in the last few years.Overall, rising disaster risk will raise annual premiums for climate-exposed households in the US by $700 by 2053, the study says."The cost of owning a home also has been more volatile over time because of the rising insurance costs and the climate change impact, and also because home prices are going up so fast," Jung Hyun Choi, a researcher at the Urban Institute's Housing Finance Policy Center, told Business Insider.Still, a big advantage to owning a home is the ability to lock in housing costs."Home ownership is still one of the most important ways of building wealth in this country," Choi said, adding that not only do homeowners build equity over time, but their costs are often fixed via the 30-year mortgage, which is the most popular home loan in the US.Renters, on the other hand, are subject to unpredictable price increases year-to-year. That's especially true after climate disasters, according to <a target="_blank" href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/risa.14224">one study</a> that looked at rent prices following hurricanes in US coastal states.In extreme disasters, median rents rise due to reduced housing supply. In less severe scenarios, rents may rise because building owners are trying to offset losses from property damage, or possibly take advantage of higher demand from displaced homeowners.<h3 id="ccd2411a-bab0-4107-bf3e-4c9ccc85ffbc">Policy favors homeowners</h3>While it may be tough to know whether costs for renters or buyers are more directly impacted after climate disasters, public policy is clearly skewed in favor of buyers, Choi says. She pointed to forbearance and loss mitigation policies that are meant to help buyers keep their homes.After Hurricane Katrina, 29% of homes in Louisiana were damaged, compared with 35% of rental housing units — but 62% of damaged homes and only 18% of damaged rental units received disaster recovery assistance, according to a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-10-17">federal study</a>.In places where federal funding was implemented for renters after Hurricane Katrina, though, rents appreciated at a much slower rate, one <a target="_blank" href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Disasters-and-the-Rental-Housing_final.pdf">study</a> found, pointing to the potential for future policy to address renters' vulnerability to climate events.Zhao points out, though, that renters generally have more flexibility to move and are less tied down when disasters strike."For renters, it's a different story. You don't own the financial risk of living in Florida if a hurricane comes through," Zhao said, adding, "I think that's the other thing that kind of drives a wedge between these regions and other places in the country, and also drives a wedge between homeowners and renters."Zhao acknowledges that renters still "certainly own the personal risk" of a hurricane. Renters lose their housing stability personal property the same as homeowners.Whether renting or buying is more advantageous amid climate change will be determined by policy solutions implemented in the next few years. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of clarity yet, Choi says.She adds there's a chance that renting has the upper hand in high climate-risk areas."If we kind of leave it like this, it could be actually better to just rent because you don't really have to worry about your properties being severely damaged and you're not getting any insurance coverage," Choi said.

Here's how natural disasters are shaping the buy-versus-rent decision in vulnerable states like Florida

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Jamaica can't tap into catastrophe-bond funds despite Hurricane Beryl's devastation.</li><li>That's because the air pressure level required for a payout wasn't exceeded. </li></ul>Although a category-five hurricane laid waste to Jamaica, the nation won't be able to access funds from a bond meant to cover natural disasters, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-05/catastrophe-bond-investors-dodge-losses-after-beryl-hits-jamaica">Bloomberg reported</a>.That's despite the fact that Jamaica was among the first to introduce so-called catastrophe bonds, or assets that offer traders an attractive yield for the risk of losing their money due to a natural disaster. With climate change on the rise, <a target="_blank" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/bonds/hedge-fund-harvard-physics-catastrophe-bonds-extreme-weather-cimate-change-2024-3">cat bonds have grown into a hotter</a> investment.But in this case, investors in the country's $150 million asset won't have to pay a dime, the outlet said.Instead, bond holders were spared loss due to the specific terms of the investment vehicle.To pay, air pressure during the hurricane would need to have reached a defined minimum in any of the country's sub-areas, Bloomberg reported, citing an advisory sent to investors by Switzerland-based <a target="_blank" rel="noopener" class="media-ui-Link_link-tVkXhPLPofs-" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/4529593Z:SW">Plenum Investments</a>. Although a powerful storm, pressure did not meet that criteria.The structure of the cat bonds was such that they paid investors 7% above the US Treasury rate. According to the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2024/04/25/world-bank-returns-to-the-cat-bond-market-providing-financial-protection-to-jamaica">World Bank</a>, the asset provides catastrophe insurance for four hurricane seasons and has brought in 15 global investors.While Jamaica has to turn inwards to cover damage costs, the country has $1.6 billion in a disaster safety net, Bloomberg said. Meanwhile, its sovereign bonds remain intact.Climate disasters are <a target="_blank" href="https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/bonds/catastrophe-bonds-climate-change-us-treasury-yields-disaster-insurance-costs-2023-10">not always strong enough</a> to trigger cat bond payouts, an expert told Business Insider in October.In fact, despite over 20 disasters hitting the US last year, the Swiss Re Global Cat Bond Total Return Index hit its highest one-year return since in two decades, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:bb189e59-a15f-49df-a250-07b2c6b2d9bd/2024-02-sr-ILS-market-insights-feb-2024.pdf">reaching 19.69%</a>.

Why hurricane-stricken Jamaica can't tap into $150 million of natural-disaster insurance

While headlines often dwell on the destructive power of <keyword id="6362774" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="earthquake" source="Orion">earthquake</keyword>s, their true human cost can be elusive. A recent study offers a fresh perspective through a new metric: the earthquake fatality load, or <keyword id="20689239" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="eqfl" source="keywords">EQFL</keyword>. This metric compares earthquake fatalities to a country's population, revealing how some nations bear a disproportionate burden of earthquake deaths. Surprisingly, smaller countries like Ecuador, <keyword id="19935844" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="lebanon" source="keywords">Lebanon</keyword>, and <keyword id="19959300" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="haiti" source="keywords">Haiti</keyword> topped the EQFL list, despite experiencing fewer earthquakes than larger, more earthquake-prone nations like <keyword id="19904740" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="japan" source="keywords">Japan</keyword> or China. The researchers suggest this disparity might be due to how even minor earthquakes can significantly impact smaller, unprepared populations. Additionally, such losses represent a larger portion of their population, making them more devastating for smaller nations. Apart from these, countries on major tectonic plate boundaries also rank high due to the occurrence of intense earthquakes in these regions. This explains Afghanistan's high EQFL ranking, as it lies in a zone where the Indian and Eurasian plates meet. Encouragingly, the study also found a global decline in EQFL over time, suggesting that advancements in building codes, disaster preparedness, and rescue efforts are mitigating the human cost of earthquakes. The global trend of urbanisation, with its typically more earthquake-resistant construction and faster emergency response in cities, could further contribute to this decline. However, challenges remain in countries like <keyword id="19894993" type="General" weightage="20" keywordseo="italy" source="keywords">Italy</keyword>, where older, vulnerable buildings are still in use. The EQFL serves as a valuable tool for understanding and addressing the human cost of earthquakes. By identifying the most vulnerable countries, it can guide targeted disaster risk reduction efforts and resource allocation.

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Heavy rains to lash across the country between Oct 12-16, here's how you can insure your home from rain's fury

Ira Alok Puranik

Hurricanes are taking the election by storm. Here's where Harris and Trump stand on natural disaster policies.

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Here's how natural disasters are shaping the buy-versus-rent decision in vulnerable states like Florida

Kelly Cloonan

Why hurricane-stricken Jamaica can't tap into $150 million of natural-disaster insurance

Filip De Mott

Which countries are most affected by severe seismic activity? New earthquake metric provides fresh perspective

Ankush Banerjee

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