Lisbon, Sept. 24, 2026 (Lusa) - The Portuguese Insurers' Association announced in Lisbon on Thursday that it had received 224,000 claims following the bad weather that hit the country at the start of the year, and had settled 96% of claims from private individuals.
«We had received 224,000 claims as of yesterday [Wednesday],» said the president of the Portuguese Insurers' Association, José Galamba de Oliveira, speaking at the Ad Hoc Committee for National Resilience, Natural Disaster Prevention and Monitoring of Portugal's Transformation, Recovery and Resilience (PTRR).
The association reports it has settled 96% of claims from private individuals, a figure Galamba de Oliveira described as a «very high settlement rate», given that around nine months have passed since the series of storms hit the country.
Of these, 73.5% were entitled to compensation, 22% were claims that insurers did not approve, and the remaining 4% are still under review.
As he highlighted, insurers received, within 15 days, the equivalent of six months' worth of multi-risk insurance premiums and, during the same period, began paying policyholders.
The Portuguese Insurers' Association said the sector «rose to the challenge of an operation of this scale», but called for lessons to be learnt from the process, noting some speculation about building material prices.
Galamba de Oliveira believes that greater financial literacy regarding risk is still needed, as many people had insurance but were unaware of their cover or needed to adjust their sums insured.
Insurers acknowledged, on the other hand, that they must improve their communication capabilities to provide claimants with updates on the status of their claims more promptly.
In concluding his remarks, the president of the Portuguese Insurers' Association called for the rapid establishment of a centre for catastrophic risk protection.
In response to MPs, he emphasised that although the sector is accustomed to managing disasters, it had never before faced a problem on this scale.
Nevertheless, he stressed that the insurers had managed to provide a «satisfactory, though not optimal or ideal» response.
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