An increase in extreme weather events is driving higher home insurance costs. According to a new report by the insurance Council of Australia, the insurance catastrophe resilience report is warning. The impact these events are having on the economy has more than tripled over the past three decades.
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00:00This is the place Tammy Fogarty now calls home after a freak storm flattened her house
00:08last Christmas.
00:09It basically just ripped the roof off my house and flipped my front veranda into my lounge
00:14room.
00:15Her insurance is covering the cost of the rental while her house in the Gold Coast hinterland
00:20is rebuilt.
00:21The cash settlement that I've been offered will be covering all of that plus the rent
00:25in the house I'm in at the moment.
00:27A report from the Insurance Council of Australia has found stories of extreme weather like
00:32Tammy's are driving up the cost of home insurance.
00:36More than 150,000 claims were made in the past financial year, nearly 75% more than
00:44the previous year.
00:45Premiums are already rising but they're not keeping pace with payouts which have tripled
00:50over three decades.
00:52And floods are having the biggest impact.
00:55Flooding is our number one issue in Australia and the reason for that is we know that there's
00:59around 220,000 homes approximately that were built in a 1 in 20 flood zone or a 5% chance
01:06that they will flood every year.
01:08Christmas storms in Victoria, New South Wales and on the Gold Coast that saw flooding in
01:13undate homes and businesses were the costliest events last financial year, resulting in $1.3
01:20billion in claims.
01:22We've got to get back to the core of what we're dealing with here and that is an ageing
01:27stock of homes in this country built in some of the wrong locations that we can do a better
01:32job of protecting into the future.
01:35Tammy just hopes her insurance company helps her.
01:37They've been really good so far, they have been very proactive in getting things done
01:43so yeah I'm hoping that the premium doesn't go up too much.
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