The benign catastrophe loss experience celebrated by South Africa’s insurers in their 2024 and 2025 annual reports has been ripped asunder by significant extreme weather-related events even before the halfway mark of 2026.
Flooding and wild fire caused extensive, multi-province damage in the first quarter of the year, before a series of clustered severe weather events blighted April and May. The situation in South Africa looks somewhat similar to Kenya where fresh floods swept across parts of the country in March, once again putting the country’s insurance sector under strain barely two years after the industry paid out more than KES5 billion (US$38.67 million) in claims linked to the devastating 2024 deluge.
Despite these challenges, Santam Limited, South Africa’s largest general insurer, issued an upbeat operational update for the first three months of 2026. On May 18, the insurer reported that its gross written premium (GWP), underwriting margin and return on capital were in line with its long-term targets “despite significant weather-related and other large claims incurred during the three-month period.”
Santam confirmed that its underwriting performance for January-March 2026 had been adversely impacted by losses net of reinsurance totalling approximately ZAR430 million (US$26.1 million).
“The majority of these claims relate to flooding in the northern part of South Africa and wildfires in the Western Cape; in contrast, the comparable period benefited from the absence of significant loss events,” said the insurer.
The claims preceded the extreme weather madness the country experienced in April and May. “We have not been notified of any significant claims from the flooding in the Western Cape in April 2026,” Santam wrote. “But we anticipate significant claims from the widespread damage caused by the severe weather conditions in the Western Cape in May.”
Santam’s conventional insurance underwriting performance for the remainder of the year was, therefore, susceptible to adverse weather-related and other significant loss experiences.
Disruptive weather
Starting around May 4, South Africa saw a cluster of severe weather episodes involving disruptive rainfall, flooding, extreme winds and even snowfall across the Eastern Cape, Northern Cape and Western Cape. Severe weather conditions also affected parts of the Free State and Mpumalanga provinces, prompting the National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) to declare a national disaster.
A further disaster classification was issued just days later, following a second bout of severe weather affecting all of the aforementioned provinces, excluding Mpumalanga.
On May20, the minister of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) welcomed the further classification of a national disaster issued by the head of the NDMC, Elias Sithole. The minister noted that the second classification did not replace the first, and that both remained in effect and operational until withdrawn.
The anecdotal evidence of loss and damage following the May weather disruptions is widespread. The Western Cape storms had claimed over 10 lives by May26, with severe flooding causing access constraints and damaging infrastructure across several districts.
A trail of destruction
At a community level, there were reports of bridges and sections of roads washed away; houses flooded; power outages; roofs blown off; and uprooted trees, to name a few. The extent of the crisis was reflected in around 930 emergency calls to the City of Cape Town’s disaster risk centre in just three and a half hours.
The wider Cape picture included major river flooding along the Breede River Valley with three drownings and dozens rescued from rooftops. One farm owner told GroundUp that the water was at least two metres higher than in the 2023 and 2024 floods.
IOL reported on 16 May that more than 2,000 people had been displaced in the Cape Winelands alone, with significant damage to the high-voltage infrastructure. In George, Western Cape, gale-force winds reportedly uprooted 263 trees at the George Golf Club.
By May20, the Western Cape Department of Infrastructure still listed multiple closed routes in the Garden Route, while the Department of Agriculture said it was assessing heavy losses across several farming regions, including the Hex River Valley, Grabouw/Elgin, Ceres and Worcester. Further afield, the state broadcaster, SABC, reported three deaths in the Northern Cape, with 85 villages affected and 26 bridges damaged.
Insurance claims likely to surge
It is difficult for insurers to comment on insured loss exposures immediately following a catastrophe of this scale. Tandiwe Cimela, executive at Elite Risk, told Africa Ahead they had received more than 230 claims following the severe and devastating weather events that recently affected parts of the Eastern and Western Cape.
“We anticipate that claims volumes may continue to rise as the full impact across the market becomes clearer; at this stage, we estimate CAT-related claims in these areas to be around ZAR15 million (around US$910 000),” she said.
Cimela noted that “the frequency and severity of weather-related events highlight an evolving risk landscape, with flooding becoming an increasingly material exposure across both urban and rural environments.”
The executive singled out early warning systems, municipal preparedness and client-level resilience measures as important factors in managing overall loss outcomes.
In other reporting, Moneyweb confirmed that insurers were dealing with an influx of storm-related claims. Discovery said it had activated its catastrophe-response plan, and was bringing in additional assessment capacity.
Naked Insurance said the early spike pointed to meaningful property-related claims activity, and that it expected vehicle claims to rise where cars had been driven through flooded roads or damaged by falling trees or debris.
Deepening collaboration
Regional insurers are aware of their rising exposure to natural disasters, and are seeking out resilience and sustainability opportunities outside their traditional underwriting function. Africa Ahead recently reported on one such initiative, a partnership between the South African Weather Service (SAWS) and Santam. The partnership aims to improve early-warning and forecasting capability through additional automatic weather stations.
Commenting at the launch, Thabiso Rulashe, head of strategy and investor relations at the insurer, said that “early warnings protect lives, livelihoods and local economies.”
Santam also runs a Partnership for Risk and Resilience (P4RR) programme, aimed at helping local municipalities with disaster management, including early warning and preparation for flood and wildfire risks. The brand’s 2025 Integrated Report says over 110 municipalities have been reached through the programme.
Another major non-life insurer initiative, the Quick Reaction Force, is a collaboration between Hollard, Santam, Old Mutual Insure, Bryte, Infiniti and Lombard alongside aerial firefighting and Fire Protection Association partners to respond faster to wildfire threats.
South Africa’s recent natural catastrophe shocks, brought about by what SAWS calls an extensive cut-off low, have refocused stakeholders on the risk identification and mitigation aspects of risk management. SAWS explains this cut-off low as a weather phenomenon where a high-level, low-pressure system detaches from the predominant air flow and becomes trapped and slow-moving, causing extreme cold, heavy rainfall and flooding.
Risk as an interconnected system
Yvonne Mothibi, CEO of the Institute of Risk Management South Africa (IRMSA), said the May 2026 events were moments during which the risk management discipline moved from risk registers into the real world. She told InsuranceBiz that organisations needed to understand risk as an interconnected system, not as a list of isolated events.
IRMSA summarised the latest weather disruption as a type of national resilience test demanding immediate action from risk managers and executives across the private and public sectors. The institute urged local firms to review their recovery plans, paying close attention to business continuity, emergency responses and infrastructure dependencies. This appeal will resonate with insurers and reinsurers, who increasingly view practical resilience, including risk identification and mitigation, as more sustainable than paying post-loss claims.
“The lesson is that risk mitigation starts long before the storm arrives,” Mothibi said, offering a long list of pre-disaster interventions for both public and private sector decision makers.
The pre-disaster interventions include drainage, early-warning systems, flood and stormwater management, infrastructure investment and routine maintenance. “If your foundations are weak, every disaster becomes more expensive, more disruptive and more harmful to vulnerable communities,” she said.
The positive sign is that insurers are getting involved beyond the claims function through wildfire response capacity, weather data partnerships, municipal resilience programmes and even, in the South African context, pothole repair and traffic control. Together, these insurers are demonstrating how underwriting knowledge can be used to support communities, protect livelihoods and save lives.
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