During the first three days of fall, Aegon alone received 1,800 residential damage claims. The extreme conditions struck Budapest the hardest (465 claims), followed by Pest County (292), with Veszprém County in Western Hungary in third place (200). The small town of Kisvárda (about 242 km northeast of Budapest) alone produced 83 claims.

About one-third of the incidents were lightning-related. A significant portion of claims reported damage related to storms (455), downpours (333), and leaking-related incidents (289) as the main cause of damage.

The total value of insurance claims of Aegon clients surpassed the HUF 280 mln mark by Monday morning, with the average value of claims at around HUF 166,000.

In a separate report Tuesday, state news agency MTI cited the Association of Hungarian Insurance Companies (Mabisz) as saying that Hungarian insurers paid out a total of almost HUF 3.2 billion on claims for storm damage in the four months between the beginning of May and the end of August this year. Insurers paid out the amount on a little more than 57,000 claims.

By comparison, in the corresponding summer period a year earlier, insurers paid out about HUF 6 bln on more than 103,000 claims for storm damage. Mabisz noted that 2010 was the worst year of the decade for storm damage, when insurers paid out a total of HUF 30 bln on some 312,000 claims.