A single heatwave event lasting six days in late June produced more than 10,650 excess deaths across Europe, of which approximately 9,000 were among people aged 65 and over, according to S&P Global Ratings. In the UK, the May and June heatwaves combined produced around 2,877 excess deaths - almost double the 1,504 recorded across the 2025 summer. Across Europe as a whole, the economic losses from last year's heatwave season reached approximately €43 billion, of which less than 2% was covered by insurance, according to Moody's estimates.
S&P's response to these figures is measured rather than alarming. Volker Kudszus, managing director and sector lead for insurance ratings in EMEA at S&P Global Ratings, said the agency estimates that the effects of this summer's heatwaves - including excess mortality and the deterioration of existing health conditions - "affect European re/insurers' financials, but not to an extent that would affect ratings." European life re/insurers, S&P concludes, are well positioned to assess and manage these risks in the near term.
The concern S&P raises is forward-looking. Credit pressure could increase over the medium to long term as extreme temperature events become more frequent and intense alongside demographic ageing - and, crucially, as the gap between what existing contracts price and what rising temperatures are producing continues to widen.
Extreme heat exacerbates cardiovascular disease, dehydration and respiratory conditions - all concentrated heavily in elderly populations. That drives both mortality claims on life policies and higher demand for private medical services, creating a dual pressure on life and health re/insurers simultaneously.
The demographic trajectory in which this sits is structural. Between 2004 and 2024, the share of EU residents aged 65 and over rose from 16.4% to 21.6%, while those aged 80 and over climbed from 3.8% to 6.1%, according to EU data cited in the S&P report. Europe is also warming at roughly twice the global average rate. The combination of an ageing population and accelerating temperature increases means the exposure S&P is flagging grows in both dimensions over time.
For UK-based life insurers specifically, the mortality arithmetic is not straightforward. The IFoA's Longevity Bulletin editor Michael Anderson noted in July that heatwave mortality spikes often show a compensating dip in deaths in the weeks that follow - a pull-forward effect that can mean total annual mortality stays close to trend even after a severe summer event.
Moody's RMS modelling also flags a partial offset that does not apply in southern Europe: milder winters resulting from the same warming trend that produces hotter summers tend to reduce cold-related mortality in northern Europe, including the UK. Cold currently accounts for approximately ten times more mortality than heat globally, so the net mortality impact of warming on UK life insurers is, at present, more ambiguous than the heatwave figures alone suggest.
Actuaries at the IFoA have said a single hot summer is unlikely to change the mortality assumptions life insurers use to model and price risk. Policyholders are also typically more affluent and healthier than the general population, which has historically translated into a smaller proportional impact from heat events on insured versus population mortality.
None of that near-term caution changes S&P's central finding: rising temperatures have not yet been fully priced into existing contracts, which means re/insurers are currently absorbing costs that policies were not written to cover. That gap between the mortality environment contracts were priced to reflect and the one that is now developing is not a theoretical future risk. It is present in every multi-year contract written before recent heatwave seasons redefined what a normal European summer looks like.
The Moody's figure makes the scale of the structural protection gap concrete. European heatwave losses reaching €43 billion with less than 2% covered by insurance is not a claims management problem - it is evidence that conventional insurance structures built around discrete loss events have not adapted to a peril that builds gradually, expresses itself through worsening underlying conditions rather than sudden physical damage, and disproportionately affects a cohort that is simultaneously growing as a share of the population.
Kudszus said S&P expects insurers to develop action plans over the next few years, including loss-prevention initiatives and measures to raise policyholders' awareness of heat-related health risks. Parametric structures, which pay out against a measurable trigger rather than a specific loss event, are increasingly cited as the product architecture best suited to heat risk - the European parametric insurance market is forecast to reach $7.93 billion by 2031, according to KBV Research, with compound annual growth of 9.5% between 2025 and 2032.
For UK brokers advising clients on life, critical illness, private medical or income protection cover, S&P's analysis identifies a timing gap worth acting on. The rating agency is not projecting imminent repricing, but it is describing a trajectory where contracts written against older mortality assumptions will come under pressure as heat mortality accumulates and the demographic weight of older policyholders grows.
The clients most exposed to that repricing when it arrives are older policyholders - particularly those on protection products with fixed or long-term premium structures that were priced when UK summers looked different from the ones of 2025 and 2026. For those clients, reviewing whether existing cover remains adequate - and what the terms of any replacement or top-up cover look like now compared with what they will look like once insurers have begun formally incorporating updated heat mortality assumptions - is a conversation that has more value before that repricing begins than after it.
