Risk of deaths linked to heatwaves underestimated, Swiss Re CEO says

ZURICH: Authorities failed to grasp the scale of risk to human ​life posed by heatwaves, the CEO of reinsurance company Swiss Re was quoted as saying on Sunday, as Europe faces mounting deaths linked to ‌extreme summer temperatures. Europe, ‌the world’s ​fastest-warming ‌continent, ⁠has ​reported thousands of ⁠excess deaths during a record-breaking heatwave, most of them people aged 65 and above. France and Spain have been particularly ⁠hard hit by the ‌heat ‌in recent weeks.
“The ​risk of ‌heatwaves and the associated ‌fatalities was underestimated,” Swiss Re CEO Andreas Berger told Swiss newspaper NZZ am Sonntag, adding: “We ‌need to raise awareness of the dangers arising from ⁠this.” Berger, ⁠who was speaking after Swiss Re reported a 9 percent increase in net profit for the first half of 2026, said it was too early to say definitively how the excess mortality ​would affect ​the Zurich-based company’s figures.