Broker calls on insurers to offer mental support services

Berry, his brother and father are partners in their family run brokerage that serves clients across South East Queensland and northern NSW. He has two decades of insurance broking experience after starting in the family business at the age of 17.

Berry said many of the calls he is taking are from clients who don’t actually have flood insurance but are hoping their existing coverage may help them out in some way.

“I think they do know that it [their business or home] isn’t covered, but they’re just calling hoping for some sort of miracle,” he said.

Read more: Broker says flooding is worst he’s seen

Berry and several of his staff work from home on the Gold Coast. Their Lismore office was inundated by the flooding. In previous Lismore floods moving furniture and valuable items up to the first floor was enough to protect these items. Not this time. Yet he’s had little chance to worry about his own flood damaged business.

“I just feel like we’ve been abandoned by insurers,” he said. “It’s almost like they’re just trying to hand it all to us and say, ‘You can have those difficult conversations.’ The difficult conversations that we’re having are happening probably 20 times a day and they [the insurers] just kind of wipe their hands of it. I find that really frustrating,” said Berry.

He said since the floods he’s received a total of about 100 calls to his mobile from clients each day.

Berry mentioned a friend who works for the intermediated division of a big Australian insurance company. The friend was concerned enough about the stress Berry is currently under that he put his name forward for the insurance company’s mental health program. However, the mental health program is only for official staff members, so he is unlikely to be accepted.

“There are going to be a lot of brokers out there who are suffering incredibly from mental health issues from having these conversations [with flood victims]. The insurers just pass the ball and say, ‘You deal with it, you can sort yourself out,’ that sort of thing, ‘it’s not our problem,’” said Berry.

However, he said, in some ways this a problem of the insurers’ own making. One big reason Berry is overrun with calls is because many of his distressed clients have business or home insurance policies that don’t include flood coverage. Insurance companies either don’t provide flood coverage or what they offer is unaffordable.

For example, said Berry, a business in the CBD of Lismore might pay about $2,500 for business property insurance per year. If they’re able to get flood insurance it would cost, he said, about $100,000 on top of that.

“They need to be doing something,” he said. “We’re the ones placing these policies for them and getting the money in the door for them so I think they do need to reach out more [to us],” he said.

Berry appealed to Australia’s insurance companies to offer mental support services that include, not just their own staff but also the brokers who sell their insurance products.

“At the moment it’s [the flood situation] like a war zone and definitely very traumatic,” he said.

“A lot of brokers are just family run businesses and while there are some bigger organizations I think even in some of those there’s probably not a whole lot of [mental] support offerings,” he said.

The National Insurance Brokers Association (NIBA) has acknowledged that brokers are on the front line of the community response to the recent floods.

“I know many brokers are already overrun and overwhelmed but at the same time they are there for their clients,” said NIBA CEO Phil Kewin.

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This week, NIBA announced that it would like to establish a claims support initiative. The initiative would involve interested insurance brokers making themselves available to help victims of the recent floods with their insurance claims, if they currently don’t have a broker.

Berry’s experience suggests that many brokers may need support services themselves.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, NIBA recommended free mental health services to its insurance broker members. The services included clinics, tools and guides provided by the Black Dog Institute and the National Mental Health Commission.

Thursday’s flood update from the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) reported that insurance companies have now received nearly 120,000 claims related to the South-East Queensland and New South Wales floods. More than 80% of the claims concern property damage.

The ICA estimated the current total cost of all flood claims at $1.77 billion.