The expected surge in insurance claims from south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales is beginning. This in the wake of Cyclone Alfred.
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00:00A total of 63,000 insurance claims have been lodged, according to the Insurance Council
00:08of Australia, as a result of ex-tropical cyclone Alfred.
00:11Now, the vast majority of those have been here in southeast Queensland and have related
00:17to either wind damage or inundation from floodwaters.
00:21We've also seen a large volume of claims relating to food spoilage.
00:25This is perhaps because the region was without power for up to a week, and a lot of businesses
00:30would have had to throw away their food unless they had a backup generator.
00:35We've also seen about 10,000 claims in just the past few days.
00:39The Insurance Council says this is likely due to the fact that people have finally gotten
00:42to the weekend and been able to assess the damage, and not had to worry about things
00:47like work or school for the kids.
00:50Now, this tropical cyclone Alfred passed over about five million people, and at one point
00:55was looking like a Category 2 system, which this part of the world isn't accustomed to.
00:59So, the Insurance Council was very nervous about the effect of strong winds and flooding
01:04in quite flood-prone areas.
01:06But thankfully, to this point, the scale of the insurance claims haven't been as severe
01:11as previously thought.
01:14In previous events, such as the 2022 flood event here in this region, which was the costliest
01:19natural disaster in Australian history, the Insurance Council says they received about
01:23245,000 claims, and it cost insurers $6.4 billion.
01:29So we're nowhere near that point yet, although they do expect more claims to come.
01:34Unfortunately, many of these people that will have been affected this time around will have
01:38also been affected by those previous flood events, say in 2011, and also in 2022.
01:44So they would have seen their insurance premiums rise.
01:47A lot of those people would have been unable to get flood insurance, and so the Council
01:52suspects that that is a large part of why we haven't seen the volume of claims as previous
01:57events.