Stray drones turn Baltic war cover into a separate product

Drones straying from the war in Ukraine struck an empty oil depot in Latvia, a power-plant chimney in Estonia and a parked car in Lithuania in 2026. Estonia-based Sunly has insured its solar parks in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, worth 600 million euros in total, against war spillover. In October Telia insured its infrastructure, including data centres in Lithuania, for up to 50 million euros. Sunly says several large banks now require terrorism and sabotage cover as a standard condition.

Pricing has two tiers. The add-on premium for a home can be as low as 10 euros a year. Corporate premiums, linked to asset value, run to tens of thousands of euros a year. Aon has received dozens of war cover requests from the region in the past three months. Vilnius and Riga airports and an unnamed major Baltic port are considering new drone and geopolitical risk cover. Swedbank has added war to home cover in all three Baltic states, though initially for only six months.

The constraint is legal and capital-driven. On 25 May the Latvian Insurers Association wrote that standard policies generally exclude military drone damage, and that add-on cover is granted case by case, on limited terms and at a markedly higher price. In July London's High Court ruled that the sabotage damage to Nord Stream fell under the war exclusion. The market standard required an insured asset to sit at least 100 km from the front line; according to Bloomberg, the EBRD managed to halve that distance.