LA TRIBUNE – Mobilizing 9 people from Macif, the 5-day, 5-commune operation is taking place from August 28 to September 1 in Charente-Maritime and Deux-Sèvres. The permanence will stop in five municipalities recognized in a state of natural disaster. Is it the first of its kind organized by your group?
JEAN-PHILIPPE DOGNETON – We are always close to our members and we adapt our presence according to the situation. Generally, we call the victims, the delegates are in contact with the members, the managers too, and we sometimes open reception points in the town halls. In this specific case, we have chosen an itinerant formula: this initiative illustrates Macif’s desire to maintain the human link essential to reassure and support our victim members beyond the declaration of loss. It is a form of increased and stronger relationship in contact with the member.
Claims of climatic origin have however been generalized for many years now. Why is this operation taking place only now?
The mutual ensures as often as possible to go into direct contact with the victims. This is not always easy when the event involves a very large population. In this case, the earthquake is concentrated in a limited area. Moreover, earthquakes, there are not every morning. It is an event that people experienced in their flesh. On the Richter scale, the intensity of the earthquake was measured at more than 5.
It is quite significant. Tomorrow, we will be faced with increasingly violent and targeted climatic disasters. We could in the future speak of climate violence, as a new form of violence that will affect society.
Furthermore, what we wanted to show through this operation is that this claim has not been forgotten. With the news, one subject chases the other. What happened on June 16, people don’t really remember. However, we were confronted with a major event. We have an overall charge for the market which must be approximately 300 million euros. On the Macif side, we recorded more than 2,000 claims that directly affected our members.
What is the objective pursued through this operation?
With a little hindsight, following the first expert missions carried out and the decrees of natural disasters, our objective is to get in touch with the municipalities and especially the victims, in order to provide answers: we will do pedagogy, and We will give all the technical explanations expected to reassure our members. I think it’s not easy, when you’re affected, to understand how a natural disaster decree works, an expert report, how you’re going to be relocated, whether it’s reconstruction or repair , how soon, if I can get support…
Beyond the responses provided to disaster victims, what is Macif’s ambition?
We must develop a culture of risk. It is essential to save lives. To do this, it is necessary to set the right axes of prevention, which are often simple, but not always executed. We also need to support more, accompany more. This is all the more important since we know that climatic events will, alas, develop over the coming period. Since the beginning of 2023, we have opened 50,000 claims on hail, gales, etc.
How to develop the culture of risk, and this, well before the arrival of the disaster?
2500 to 3000 municipalities concentrate 60% of the climatic load. If we were to prioritize action, it should focus on these municipalities. I always have this idea that you have to have a global vision of course, but above all act locally. The local must take precedence, because each risk is different.
In addition, the climatic perils are very varied and of unequal intensity (hail, wind, marine flooding, drought, etc.). They can be aggravated when the nature of an event falls into oblivion, as happened with the storm Xynthia in 2010.
Finally, it is important to be very practical: if you live in an area where there is a risk of marine flooding, take the time to read your municipality’s risk prevention plan. These are all common sense tips, but in practice they are not implemented. This is the culture of risk: what can happen? And what can happen to a peril I forgot existed? We have to learn to live with risk, it should be natural, and there is nothing to worry about.
Last May, Ministers Bruno Le Maire and Christophe Béchu launched a mission on the insurability of climate risks, the conclusions of which should be published by the end of the year. What do you expect?
I’m a big fan of the natural disaster compensation system. More broadly, and well beyond the regime of natural disasters, I plead for an old principle of insurance, that of pooling. To pool is to accept life in a community, it is to accept to form a society, it is finally to accept to regulate situations that threaten solidarity. The trend towards segmentation, in particular implemented by new entrants, strikes me, and does not provide the answers to the challenges that we must face.
To come back to the regime for natural disasters, I find it very virtuous, and I would like it to continue by modifying it as little as possible, but taking into account the requirement of prevention and the true value of the risk.
An insured person might tell you that climate risks are difficult to anticipate. They should certainly accelerate, but it is difficult today to assess what their magnitude will be, which complicates the task of assessing the increase in contributions. What do you answer?
Just look at the trend curve. The observation is quite obvious: the load of the
claims is increasing year on year, and this trend is accelerating and in this context,
the insurer takes, of course, its share of risk. I think that if we explain it well, the increase in contributions will be accepted, because the alternative would be painful: we protect less, or even no longer protect. This is already the case in some countries. I will never come to terms with that.
2023-08-28 05:42:57
#Faced #climate #change #develop #culture #risk #JeanPhilippe #Dogneton #Macif
