New South Wales accounts for eight of Australia’s top 10 high-risk bushfire postcodes, according to data from insurer GIO, as the country heads into a summer shaped by what the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has confirmed is a strengthening El Niño event.
The rankings, based on the number of homes assessed as high-risk for bushfire within each postcode using GIO’s natural hazard modelling, place Batemans Bay on the South Coast (postcode 2536) at the top of the national list. Gosford (2250) and Wyong (2259) on the Central Coast ranked second and third, followed by Shoalhaven (2540) in fourth. North-western Sydney postcodes covering Blacktown, Penrith and The Hills Shire (2765 and 2155), the Hunter Valley around Cessnock (2325), and the Blue Mountains including Springwood (2777) also made the national top 10.
The BoM’s El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) tracker, updated on October 27, 2026, recorded the weekly Niño3.4 index at +2.88°C, with climate models forecasting El Niño conditions to peak around November or December and persist into autumn 2027.
The Australasian Fire Authorities Council’s (AFAC) spring 2026 seasonal bushfire outlook flagged heightened risk across northern and south-eastern NSW, driven by below-average rainfall and accumulated fuel loads.
GIO severe weather meteorologist Andrew Bufalino said the coming months could test fire preparedness across eastern Australia.
“There is the potential for a very hot summer across Australia, with an increased risk of extreme fire danger across parts of eastern Australia,” Bufalino said. “Should rainfall deficiencies return to areas that have recently experienced wetter conditions, fuel drying could accelerate rapidly under hot conditions, substantially increasing the risk of bushfire.”
The concentration of high-risk postcodes in NSW has direct implications for brokers managing home and property portfolios in fire-prone areas, and those implications are sharpening as the broader property market softens.
While commercial property rates have eased in most lines, brokers report that high-risk bushfire accounts are not seeing the same relief. Household premiums in high-hazard postcodes have, by some broker estimates, moved from around $3,000 to between $6,000 and $7,000 - a trajectory that runs in the opposite direction to the market around them. That divergence is likely to widen if the summer produces the fire activity El Niño conditions suggest.
The January 2026 Victorian bushfires illustrate what a severe event costs. The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) declared it a catastrophe, and as at October 2026, it had generated more than 4,900 claims and $610 million in incurred costs. Nationally, the ICA reported $4.8 billion in extreme weather insured losses across roughly 294,000 claims in 2025, with the average cost per claim rising 39% to $16,471.
Around half the home insurance market now factors certified bushfire mitigation into pricing through the federally funded Resilience Rating scheme. Participating insurers have reduced the bushfire component of premiums by up to 60%, with total premium reductions of 5% to 21%, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).
For brokers advising homeowners in high-hazard postcodes, this scheme is an underused tool. Clients who can demonstrate documented mitigation work - cleared gutters and perimeters, ember-resistant vents, defensible space - have a basis to present to insurers for rate relief that clients who have done the same work without documentation do not. Brokers placing residential renewals in the top-risk postcodes should be asking which of their insurer markets participate in the scheme, and whether clients have undertaken the assessments that unlock it.
The more significant gap is commercial and strata. No equivalent to the Resilience Rating scheme exists for those property classes. Commercial property in bushfire-exposed areas - manufacturing facilities, rural warehousing, tourism accommodation, strata complexes in peri-urban locations - carries the same fire loading as adjacent residential property but without the pricing relief mechanism that residential owners can access. Brokers placing those risks face a harder conversation at renewal, without the mitigation credit lever that the residential market has begun to offer.
GIO head of home insurance Josh Kelland noted that understanding property-level risk is becoming a bigger part of household decision-making. “Each individual property has unique risks and unique insurance pricing based on those risks, so it’s important households understand these risks and what they can do to reduce them,” he said.
