PERILS, an independent organisation providing industry-wide catastrophe insurance data, has revealed the fourth and final estimate of insurance market loss for the catastrophic flooding in Queensland and New South Wales (NSW) in March 2021.
The final report provides a comprehensive breakdown of property and motor losses by postcode, with the data further divided by residential and commercial lines and providing loss amounts split into buildings, contents, and business interruption losses where available. Additionally, it is complemented with postcode-level rain accumulations sourced from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM).
According to the organisation's estimate based on data collected from most of the Australian insurance market, the devastating flooding that hit both states from March 18 to 24 last year resulted in AU$688 million, covering the property and motor lines of business. Among the losses, property accounted for 88% of the total industry loss, while motor accounted for 12%.
By comparing the loss information with PERILS' market sums insured, PERILS can derive and collate damage degrees as a percentage of sums insured with the rainfall metrics based on actual, high-quality insurance market data.
PERILS announced that it will release its estimate on insurance losses for the recent catastrophic flooding in Queensland and NSW shortly.
As of March 24, the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) stated that insurers had received 161,853 claims related to the recent devastating flooding in the two states, a 1.6% increase from the previous day's numbers. Additionally, based on previous flood events, the estimated current cost of claims now totals $2.427 billion.
As the insurance industry waits for PERILS' report on the recent Queensland and NSW flooding, the BoM has warned Australians to brace themselves as more wild weather returns to eastern Australia, including those already devastated by the catastrophic flooding in the two states.
“As insurers continue to support communities dealing with recent flood losses in addition to last year's events, our hope is that our industry loss and exposure data can positively contribute to their efforts,” said Darryl Pidcock, head of PERILS Asia-Pacific.
“Some of the affected communities are still recovering from the 2021 floods, an event which has already highlighted the complexities for the insurance industry in assessing major flood and storm losses. As more detailed loss footprints are made available following each event, it will enable insurers to improve their understanding of flood risks, including their application to recent flooding loss reserve estimates.”
