With the latest Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) figures putting the number of claims and losses related to the hailstorm that hit on January 20 at approximately 60,000 and $550 million, the storms have heaped further strain on an industry already stretched by the horrific bushfires.
Insurance Business reported last week of reactionary efforts to mitigate the effects of the hailstorm with both ‘hands at the wheel’ and all ‘bodies on deck’ to help customers with claims. The industry appears to be working day and night to respond to this new event – declared a ‘catastrophe’ by the ICA.
But what is the state of play in Canberra and its surrounding areas at the moment? And how is an already stretched insurance industry coping in responding to this event? The Canberra Times reported that around 25,000 vehicles have been damaged in some form by the violent hail – the size of which wouldn’t seem out of place at the Australian Open.
Insurance Business talked to Canberra-based broker Tate Harris, who provided an update on the work that is going on to provide swift and comprehensive care to clients.
“We’re trying to get our affected clients in and assessed as quick as possible,” Harris said. “We’re making sure that any damage or holes in roofs are patched up immediately – dealing with it now so as to stop future water damage.”
Harris, who is a partner at brokerage allinsure, painted a picture of a sudden, immense storm that his brokerage, and others in the industry across the ACT, have had to respond to.
“It was unprecedented in terms of numbers – the hail itself was probably under 10 minutes but it just went… whack.” He said that the size of hail ranged from small, to golf ball sized to then even tennis ball sized – leaving a portrait of damage in its wake. “There was about three or four postcodes that got absolutely smashed,” he said.
One of his clients recalled seeing the sudden storm of hail.
“I was talking to a client with a property just on the outskirts of Canberra – and he said that you could actually see the rain come in at one angle and the hail coming down at the same angle,” Harris explained. “It went straight past their property – and on one side of land nearby there was no hailstones and on one side it looked like it had been snowing.”
As reported by The Canberra Times, the amount of damage to such a large number of cars was illustrative of a sudden storm – and equally indicated the task ahead for insurers in working with clients to sort out such damage.
“I have one client that is a towing company and they were going around and picking up the cars that were no longer driveable,” Harris said. He noticed that they were storing them in a plot of land nearby the allinsure office and asked the client why that was. “They said that they had to lease these vacant blocks of land around town to store all these vehicles – they just didn’t have space in their huge warehouse,” such was the huge number of damaged cars.
Harris explained that a quality broker as a partner can really aid a client in times like this.
“It highlights the benefits of using a quality broker,” he said. “We have the relationships in place, we know who and where the preferred repairers are, and we can act immediately on our client’s behalf.”
