The Insurance Council of Australia has dispelled concerns that the new Gold Coast flood maps could spark massive insurance price hikes in the region.
In a statement, Campbell Fuller, ICA general manager for communications and media relations, said “Gold Coast City Council’s new maps factor in a 0.8m rise in sea level by 2100,” but that this finding “is not affecting insurance premiums, nor the availability of household insurance.”
“Insurers price the risk of a flood for the 12 months that the policy is active. They do not factor in sea level changes that may occur in 80-plus years,” Fuller said. “The coastal risks of storm surge, coastal erosion, and gradual sea level rise are excluded by most general insurance policies in Australia.”
Fuller said there is significant uncertainty about flooding risk in the Gold Coast, which is affecting insurance premiums.
“At present, insurers have some limited understanding of riverine flood risk on the Gold Coast, using older data to assess flood risk for properties,” he said. “The use of older and limited data causes significant uncertainty for insurers, which must be factored in to premiums. Furthermore, without access to council’s flood data it is difficult for insurers to lower premiums where flood mitigation works may have been undertaken to reduce the risk to homes and businesses.”
To better understand flood risk to individual properties and price that risk, Fuller is urging the Gold Coast city council to provide the necessary flood models and data for the National Flood Information Database.
“Insurers would like to use the latest local government data for underwriting purposes to enable them to fine-tune their premiums,” Fuller said. “Almost every local government in Australia that has a flood risk has shared their data with the ICA, and in many cases this has resulted in lower premiums for many householders.”
