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Five consecutive heat waves have dried out the clay-based soil beneath London, pushing the city to historic levels of subsidence risk. Clay contracts as moisture leaves it.
Foundations shift when the ground beneath them does. For markets, the direct exposure runs to insurers carrying London property policies and to lenders with significant mortgage books in the city.
Five heat waves in succession is a scale of event that places those positions in a different risk category. The consensus read on London property leans on structural durability.
A soil-drying cycle running across five consecutive extreme summers is the kind of variable that tends to sit outside underwriting assumptions until it shows up in claims.
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