Australian 2022 flood industry loss costs rise to AU $4.3bn

Based on an estimate of claims incurred, the Insurance Council of Australia now puts the 2022 severe flooding in the country as the fourth most costly natural disaster event on-record, at AU $4.3 billion.

The last figure from the Insurance Council of Australia was for an estimate of insured losses from Australia’s 2022 severe flooding of AU $3.35 billion.

Now, the ICA’s industry loss figure has risen above that of PERILS AG’s initial estimate of the insurance and reinsurance market loss, which put it at close to AU $4 billion.

The ICA has now counted 216,465 claims across both South-East Queensland and Northern New South Wales from the flooding that struck Australia in February and March 2022.

The total is now more almost double that of the 2011 Brisbane flood, which saw a $2.3 billion hit to the insurance and reinsurance market.

The 2022 Australian flooding now falls fourth in the list of natural disaster insured losses in Australia, behind only Cyclone Dinah (1967, $4.69 billion), Cyclone Tracey (1974, $5.04 billion) and Eastern Sydney Hailstorm (1999, $5.57 billion).

The ICA said that a 28% increase in estimated claims cost since the last update is due to the claims assessment process progressing and commercial claims having risen, which are typically slower to come through and have a greater cost per claim.

More than 20 per cent of claims from the flooding have already been closed and almost $1 billion paid out to policyholders, the ICA said.

As we’ve previously reported, Australian insurers IAG, Suncorp and Youi are making claims and recoveries under aggregate reinsurance towers for the flood catastrophe.

Reinsurance capital sources are expected to bear the brunt of these flood losses, according to rating agency AM Best.