An analysis of the development of the fire losses in the northern countries after the Second World War

In several different countries there has lately been a very unfavourable development as far as fire losses are concerned. There have been many and very bad big fires which have especially affected industry and trade. The facts which can be considered to have caused this development are well-known. Bigger and bigger and more concentrated units of production, business enterprises, and storing form an accumulation of values which in itself implies increasing risks. On account of production-technical and business-economical conditions it has not always been possible to divide the buildings into sections desirable from a fire service point of view. The new production methods have sometimes caused new fire risks.The Northern Central Office for Fire Insurance Statistics from Mutual Companies (CNÖB) has made an investigation in order to see to what extent the international trend towards increasing fire losses has any equivalence in the Northern countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden). I.a. there was made a graphical representation of how the observed rate of net risk premium of the portfolio has developed during the period 1946–1966, the result of which may be seen from fig. 1. No increasing trend can be observed from this. After having been decreasing during the immediate postwar time, the observed rate of net risk premium has been fairly constant from the beginning of the fifties, perhaps even somewhat decreasing except during the later years. The conclusion is that in so far facts as mentioned above have influenced the development of claims of the portfolios or parts of these in a deteriorating way, there must in that case have been circumstances which have worked as neutralizers.