Turkey: 40,000 insure Istanbul homes within 4 days following quake
Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Nov 2019
Around 40,000 people in Istanbul have acquired earthquake insurance for their homes in the four days since a magnitude 5.8 quake hit the coast of the Silvri region, west of Istanbul, on 26 September.
The Istanbul earthquake was followed by more than 400 aftershocks lasting several days. It damaged nearly 2,000 buildings in the city.
According to official data published by the Turkish Catastrophe Insurance Pool (TCIP) which manages Dask, the compulsory earthquake insurance plan, the 26 September quake caused the rate of insured housing in Istanbul to rise by 1.1 percentage point, from 62.9% before the disaster struck to 64% after the quake occurred, reported the newspaper Sabah.
The official website of the TCIP shows that the number of insured houses in Istanbul was 2.315m on 27 September, and increased to 2.355m on 2 October.
Across the entire country, before the earthquake, the earthquake insurance rate was 52.4%, with 9.25m homes insured for the natural disaster out of a total of 17.66m. After the quake, the number of homes insured stood at 9.31m in Turkey, with the residential property insured rate rising to 52.7%.
Although quake insurance is compulsory in Turkey, there is little enforcement to ensure that households acquire the cover. M