Recent flooding and prolonged road closures across parts of the UK have renewed focus on how severe weather disruption is translating into motor claims and liability risk, particularly for commercial vehicles and fleets.
While the immediate impact has not yet materialised as a surge in claims, brokers say the longer-term effects of access issues, rerouting and rising transport costs are beginning to surface.
For Gary Boome, owner of Renata Group Limited, the effects so far have been more operational than claims-driven, though he expects pressure to build.
He pointed to recent flooding in Bournemouth, where the temporary closure of the town’s three main river crossings caused widespread disruption.
“All three places were shut due to flooding and it just caused havoc,” he said. “There were cars damaged by it, you [could] see them sitting on the roadside.”
Boome expects claims volumes to rise gradually as insurers continue to refine their understanding of flood-risk areas, a shift he believes will increasingly extend beyond property insurance.
“I don’t think it’ll be a massive influx, but I also think that insurers are getting better at knowing where the flood-risk areas are and pre-empting that,” he said. “I think that will come in on the commercial vehicle side as well as it does on the property.”
Beyond claims, Boome highlighted the knock-on impact of prolonged disruption on transport costs and business margins.
“I think what will happen is it will obviously push up transport costs. Initially that cost will be borne by the businesses, but then they’re going to have to reclaim that cost from somewhere,” he said. “Does that mean it’s pushed down the line to the end customer, or are they looking back to insurers to try and save more money and be more efficient with their premium, so that saves them in the long run?”
He also raised questions around how flooding affects fleets with a high proportion of electric vehicles.
“Fleets with large numbers of electric vehicles, how does this flooding really affect electric vehicles?” Boome said. “If you’ve got fleets with a large quantity of electric vehicles, does that mean they can’t go out in severe weather? It’s difficult to say, really.”
From a legal perspective, Mark Hemsted, partner at Clyde & Co, said flooding-related incidents can quickly become contested, even if they remain less frequent than other weather-driven losses.
“We are still seeing a higher volume of motor claims arising from ice and snow than from flooding,” Hemsted said. “However, when flooding does occur, it can lead to both motor and liability disputes.”
According to Hemsted, incidents involving flooded roads or diversion routes often raise questions around foreseeability, behaviour and responsibility.
“Vehicles that lose control after entering flooded areas, or that suffer water-related damage, often give rise to questions about foreseeability, driver behaviour, and whether warnings or diversion routes were adequate,” he said.
“From an insurance perspective, these incidents can quickly become contested because they sit at the intersection of policy wording, causation, and the reasonableness of the actions taken by drivers and public authorities.”
Together, the broker and legal perspectives suggest that the impact of severe weather on motor risk may be felt less through immediate claims spikes, and more through disputes, cost pressure and shifting expectations around what cover is meant to respond to.
Loss of use without physical damage remains a narrower but complex area, Hemsted added.
“These scenarios remain relatively uncommon, because they typically require a situation where property is effectively inaccessible, such as being completely surrounded by floodwater, or where a vehicle is physically trapped within a flooded area,” he said.
“In those circumstances, the initial claim is usually a first-party one, and many motor policies will not automatically provide replacement-vehicle cover where the insured vehicle is immobilised but not damaged. The position ultimately turns on the specific policy wording.”
While flooding may not yet be driving a surge in motor claims, the broker and legal perspectives suggest its impact is already being felt elsewhere - through disputes, cost pressure and rising expectations of what motor insurance should deliver during disruption.
