Insurance Bill Tops $12.3b

November 30, 2022

Data released by the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) on Wednesday shows that the insurance bill for storms and floods since January 2020 has topped $12.3 billion.

Every eastern state has been significantly affected by flooding over the last three years, while South Australia and Western Australia have been hit by storms and cyclones.

Am ICA spokesperson said that since January 2020 almost 788,000 claims related to floods and storms declared to be “Insurance Catastrophes or Significant Events: have been received by insurers, meaning that in just three years one-in-25 adult Australians has made an insurance claim because of wild and wet weather.

The cost of this year’s February-March floods in south-east Queensland and northern NSW has now reached more than $5.65 billion, surpassing the 1999 Sydney hailstorm in cost and making it the most expensive natural disaster in Australia’s history.

The flooding affecting the Central-West NSW has so far resulted in nearly 3600 claims lodged however an estimate of the extent of the damage bill is still being determined.

ICA CEO Andrew Hall said each one of the 788,000 wild and wet weather claims lodged with insurers over the past three years represents a significant disruption to an Australian homeowner, tenant, landlord, business owner, primary producer or motor vehicle owner.

“The fact that one in 25 of us has had to lodge an insurance claim because of this extreme weather is very sobering,” Mr Hall said.

“We must not ignore what this data is telling us to do – invest in community-level mitigation, home retrofits, home buybacks in the most extreme cases, and better early warning systems.

“We also need to stop building homes in harms’ way and make new homes stronger.

“Given the scale of this year’s flooding in northern NSW and south-east Queensland it’s pleasing that more than two thirds of claims from this event are now closed, and insurers are working around the clock to close out the remainder.”

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