The Insurance Council of Australia has made two significant event declarations covering NT flooding, including Katherine and surrounding regions, and Queensland flooding, including the Bundaberg region and Burnett River catchment. 

Insurers have started receiving claims across both affected regions, with numbers expected to continue rising over the coming days. It is too early to estimate the insurance damage bill. 

Gallagher Darwin branch manager Dwight Shepherd told insuranceNEWS.com.au today more than 1000 of Katherine’s population of 10,000 have been impacted in the biggest event since Cyclone Larry in 2006. 

So far it has been “quiet on the claims front” as the community focuses on clean-up, but he expects a “flood of claims” in the next week or so as power is restored.  

Some remote communities near Dauiyu on the Daly River are experiencing flooding not seen for 70 years, he says, and Mataranka and Beswick in the east are also badly affected. 

“There’ll be a lot of access issues, and everyone will be cut off for quite some time, I suspect. All of the top end of the territory, and then even down towards the centre and down in the desert country to Alice Springs, that’s unprecedented flooding down that way as well. It’s impacted a lot of stations and remote communities,” said Mr Shepherd, who moved to the NT 17 years ago for work. 

Claims from Katherine will be mostly residential, brokers say, with commercial property owners unlikely to have cover.  

“Most insurers weren’t offering [flood cover], or if they did it was economically not viable to take. So I think we’ll see certainly a lot of the domestic covers come through but most of the businesses – we won’t see much there. We might see some business interruption cover losses from a few and that would be probably the most significant portion,” Mr Shepherd said. 

“We’re not a huge place so claims numbers and repair-wise, it won’t be excessive. You’ll certainly see a lot more around the Bundaberg region compared to what we’ll see here on the losses.” 

Mr Shepherd says the event appears to have exceeded 2006 but the damage is likely to be less severe due to the Katherine Flood Mitigation Project.  

“Levee banks put in around Katherine have done a pretty substantial job in protecting the town. There’s always more that could be done on the mitigation, but certainly the levees and the temporary barriers that were in place helped reduce the losses that we would have seen.” 

In Humpty Doo, about 40km southeast of Darwin, Star Insurance Solutions principal Joshua Clayfield says local roads have only just reopened. He has received two commercial vehicle claims but no homes as yet. 

“We have one arterial road in and out, up to Darwin, so we’re completely cut off at the moment. So no food, no water ... we’ve got problems up here where our water supply has been knocked out for a couple of days,” Mr Clayfield said. 

Home premiums were already averaging $4500 in the area, with more than $7000 “not uncommon”, and this event is “definitely not going to help the cause”, he says, adding that only TIO, CGU, Blue Zebra and Castle offer cover via brokers.  

“Because we’re above the 26th parallel, we don’t see as soft a market – nowhere near the same level as the eastern states. Not even remotely close.” 

In Bundaberg, brokers told insuranceNEWS.com.au they have been working from home but are today returning to their offices after the reopening of bridges. 

At Consolidated Insurance Brokers, Daniel Roussounis says the office and staff are fine and this event did not match floods in 2013. 

“I really haven’t had much of a chance to see all the damage at this stage, because the waters are still slowly receding. I’ve just come straight to the office, I’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said.   

“I will know a bit more next week because I’m in the SES and I’ll be doing clean-up work all this weekend.”