In-depth: After the floods

After another bout of storms, the insurance industry is facing up to the possibility that they will have to deal with increasing numbers of major weather events. Andrew Pearce reports

It never rains but it pours laments the cliché.

And this was certainly the case for insurers towards the back end of 2013. Mid-way through autumn they would have been forgiven for hoping that the relatively benign weather would continue for the whole of the year, to the benefit of their household books.

Yet storm St Jude at the end of October and the heavy Christmas flooding that afflicted large swathes of Southern England put paid to such hopes.

Indeed, according to Das, the extreme weather