Insurance Council Releases Annual Catastrophe Report
9th October 2022
The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) has released the Insurance Catastrophe Resilience Report 2021–22.
The report was foreshadowed by the ICA’s Liam Walter at the FMA Quarterly Meeting in August, and highlights the insurance costs of four significant events:
- Mansfield (Victoria) earthquake - $105 million
- South Australian severe storm event - $848 million
- South East Queensland and NSW flooding - $5.28 billion
- NSW severe weather - $183 million.
Referring to the South East Queensland and NSW flooding, the report says “At $5.28 billion, the losses from this one event dwarf the devastating 2019-2020 Black Summer bushfires, which cost insurers $2.32 billion”.
The report says “the cost of floods to Australians is large and growing – since 1967 floods have cost insurers more than $23 billion, with more than $9 billion in just the last 10 years.”
Accompanying the report is research by the McKell Institute which indicated that this year’s flood cost each Australian household an average of $525 through price impacts on agricultural goods and government recovery expenditure.
Policy responses suggested by the ICA to alleviate the dangers faced by communities and the rising cost of insurance premiums include abolition of taxes on insurance, improved coordination of disaster clean-up, better land use planning and building codes, and investing in mitigation.
The reports are available at: https://insurancecouncil.com.au
