Sidestep the Storm: Minimising Natural Disaster Risk for High-Value Collections

While the 2024 World Risk Report and older – yet valid, as meteorological and geological patterns are relatively stable – research from insurer Swiss Re address the global risks of natural disasters, such information will likely be an imperfect tool for UHWNIs aiming to disaster-proof their collections.

The World Risk Report tends to focus on countries as opposed to cities. This approach is effective for smaller countries, but whether it is effective for larger countries like the United States – where risk profiles differ significantly from the east to west coasts – is questionable.

Swiss Re’s research takes a rather more city-centric approach but also focuses on rather broad factors like productivity losses due to employees being out of the office.  While such things do matter to UHNWIs and everyone else with a stake in a given economy, the research tends not to parse out issues like damage to collectibles owned by an area’s wealthiest residents.

Despite its shortcomings, this research can lead UHNWIs to make some broad conclusions:

  • Western, Central, and Southern Europe are among the safest places to safeguard collections from natural disasters. According to the 2024 World Risk Report, Monaco was the state least likely to be severely impacted by force majeure. Andorra, San Marino, and Luxembourg followed next in the ranking. Eleven of the 15 safest states were located in Western, Central, and Southern Europe, including Switzerland, Malta, and Denmark. Two states from the Northeastern Arabian Peninsula, Qatar and Bahrain, also ranked highly at #8 and #9, respectively.
  • Japan as well as Los Angeles and Amsterdam are among the places in which collections are at most risk of being lost to natural disasters. According to Swiss Re’s analysis, Tokyo and Nagoya ranked among the top 10 riskiest cities worldwide across all three dimensions of risk they assessed (related mainly to societal and economic impact). Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Osaka also appeared in the top 10 for two of these dimensions.

Comparing all of the information presented so far in this article with research from Henley & Partners on millionaires’ favorite places to live, Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, and Geneva might be ideal cities in Europe for keeping collections. Geneva seems to be particularly appealing; it was the city in mainland Europe that saw the highest rise (+36%) in the population of millionaires from 2013 – 2023.

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