During July and into August, the world’s extreme weather returned: deadly floods in Germany, huge fires in California, Sicily’s record breaking 49 degrees Celsius.
The West Australian capital also experienced consecutive weeks of devastating storms.
“For the full month of July there was no sun, it was raining every day, the city was filled with water, there were shops flooded with water and we had storm warnings every day which is very unusual for the west coast,” said Tanushree Arora-Sopori (pictured), director of Perth-based Imperium Insurance & Financial Solutions.
Brokers like Arora-Sopori said insurers are taking weeks to respond to damage claims and many are still waiting for settlement.
Perth’s foul weather continued into last week with a battering hailstorm. By that time, the Imperium Insurance director had damage of her own to deal with.
“I had my water pipe burst, my freezer broke and what not,” she said.
The broker, a Perth native for 14 years, said normally they’d expect to get two or three claims for storm damage during a year. During July alone, Imperium Insurance has taken in 10 to 15 claims.
“It’s all caused extensive damage across the city and there are claims that are coming in, the most common ones were obviously from water coming in through the roof, parts of the roofs blowing off, fence damage and stuff like that,” she said.
Arora-Sopori said, over the years, climate change fuelled cyclone and storm damage had become more common on the west coast, but not to this extent. She said the unusual storm season had exposed some problem areas for the local and national insurance industry.
“The most common problem is the lack of assessors and surveyors, or inspectors, who can actually perform the job on the field,” said Arora-Sopori.
She said insurer appointed assessors are taking at least two or three weeks to get back to the client or organize an assessment.
“Everyone is so busy that they’re fully booked,” she said.
Brokers like Arora-Sopori are doing their best to keep clients happy.
“So what we’ve been advising the client is to do any emergency repairs that are possible and then send us the invoices so we can ask the insurer to claim it back,” she said. “That way the process is much quicker, if the quantum of the claim is less than $5,000.”
However, for many west coast insurers, paper claim forms are still standard, especially for commercial claims. Delays, said Arora-Sopori, are caused by sending the paper forms to the client who then sends them back with invoices and quotes for Imperium to lodge with the insurer.
“We have tried a new approach where we don’t send claim forms manually to the insurer,” she said. “So, wherever we can, we log into the insurer’s online portal and lodge everything online. That way gives us a quicker turnaround where we don’t have to wait for a claim number.”
That involves Imperium taking the damage details from clients over the phone and lodging the claims on behalf of their clients. Arora-Sopori said that can save a few days.
The Imperium director added that this highlights another problem brokers and others in the industry often raise.
“I think Australia’s insurance industry is far behind in technology, using digital platforms. Look, national disasters can’t be controlled but what we can do is put systems in place so things can be done in a better way,” she said.
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Online portals where both broker and insurer can see all the documents simultaneously and make comments need to more widely adopted, said Arora-Sopori.
“The adoption of things like this needs to be sped up, especially when there are large losses,” she said.
Other changes are also necessary.
“We’re dealing with a fire claim at the moment, and it’s been six months, it’s ongoing,” she explained. “I don’t think that’s an efficient way. Insurers should be using more technology and accepting that a quantum is not necessarily going to be under five grand and eliminate the need for physical assessments.”
Arora-Sopori does note one positive insurance industry experience from Perth’s storms: insurers are paying out claims. So far none of her clients have been knocked back, except when the forms weren’t lodged properly.
“I believe that’s when our role comes in,” she said.
