Cyclones, flooding drive $2b surge in insurance claims
Fraser Barton |
Australians have claimed nearly $2 billion in flood, cyclone and rain insurance in six months but insurers say the bill isn’t as bad as had been expected.
Recovery is still ongoing in communities across the east coast following major weather events from January to July.
North Queensland had major floods in February after record-breaking rainfall drenched the region, claiming two lives, leaving 30,000 without power and forcing the evacuation of hundreds.
Brisbane and the state’s southeast then saw ex-tropical cyclone Alfred cross the coast, leaving a peak of 420,000 business and homes without power.
In NSW, flooding in the mid-north coast and Hunter region in May saw five people lose their lives and more than 1200 buildings made uninhabitable following a record-breaking deluge.
The Insurance Council of Australia said 11,500 claims from that region had reached almost $200 million.
Combined claims from ex-tropical cyclone Alfred and the north Queensland floods are in excess of 136,000.
Insurance claims for Alfred total $1.36 billion, while the north’s flooding has reached $274 million.
But previous natural disasters have seen much higher claims put to the council, they said.
“The good thing from these statistics is that the average claim cost was relatively low for all of these events,” council spokesman Mathew Jones told AAP.
“From 2019-2020 through to 22-23 we had a long-run of extreme weather events, cyclones, very significant floods and of course very significant bush fires.
“The average cost of extreme weather was very high, about $4.5 billion a year.”
Mr Jones said it’s normal for Australia to go through cycles of extreme weather events that cause more significant damage, then experience other systems that are still major but don’t touch populated parts of the community.
This occurred when flooding the size of of NSW inundated parts of south western Queensland in April, with entire towns evacuated and hundreds of thousands of livestock lost.
About 207,000 cattle, 176,000 sheep, and 41,000 goats are believed to have been lost during the floods in southwest and western Queensland alone.
Mr Jones said insurers received claims in the hundreds from those areas as most of the damage was to uninsured items.
“While the flood was very widespread and covered a geographic area that kind of boggles the mind, it’s very sparsely populated,” he said.
“And so there are far fewer insured assets out there to to be damaged.”
Insurance visits and consultations for affected communities are ongoing as weather systems continue to batter the east coast.
AAP
