Brokerage flooded as rivers burst

The Mooroopna high street office of North East Insurance Brokers is “under water” after constant rain pushed rivers beyond their limits across Victoria, inundating many regional towns.

Mooroopna is on the banks of the Goulburn River opposite Shepparton, and the Midland Highway crosses the river between the two towns. Thousands of people living in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley were placed under evacuation orders in recent days as catastrophic flooding hit the region.

“Along with many others, our Mooroopna office is currently under water,” North East said.

North East Principal Tim Clarke tells insuranceNEWS.com.au the brokerage’s landlord has insurance, though the event was not anticipated.

“We’re in the main drag, it’s not something you think about there. This is purely unprecedented,” he said.

Whether insurance policies will respond varies by individual policy, he says. Underwriters have carefully “rated and written accordingly, depending on the postcode,” he says, and some local residents were lulled into a sense of security by a weir system believed to send water further downstream.

“It changes a lot around this area with the flood mapping and everything like that, assuming an endorsement,” Mr Clarke said. “Now it’s just ‘let’s look at the policy and see what covers they’ve got’.”

He noted some reduction in capacity in recent years, adding to the hard market for flood cover.

“Companies like Vero have removed flood from the business pack,” he said. “If you live on the lake and I send you a premium for either $900 – or for $4700 with flood cover – it’s a case-by-case basis on who accepted that offering.”

Late yesterday, the Insurance Council of Australia escalated its event declaration to a catastrophe for regions of Victoria, Tasmania and NSW impacted since October 12, noting forecasts for further extreme weather in the days ahead. Nearly 20,000 sandbags have been used in and around Echuca to try and protect properties as the Murray River slowly rises, with its peak expected tomorrow.

North East is receiving claims from Seymour, at the southern end of the Goulburn Valley, where around 300 properties were inundated as the Goulburn River reached heights of 8.26 metres on Friday for the first time since 1916.

“The claims are just coming through because the water’s gone at this stage and they started cleaning up a little bit,” Mr Clarke said.

“Seymour has abated now, I’ve got clients there and we’ve got the hotlines with the different insurers just on standby. When the water starts to go down a little bit, you can sort of assess what can be done”.

Mr Clarke says he attended the Caulfield Cup on Saturday after a challenging journey to Melbourne from Yarrawonga.

“Towards Shepparton and the Hume Highway there were potholes on the roads, it was a bit of a nightmare with diversions and water,” he said. “Now we’ve just got to wait for this next lot of rain later this week. The Murray (River) is the issue, and it runs into the Goulburn. Around that Echuca area it is probably going to get worse.

“We’ve just got to deal with it. Just put everything in place to expect that phone call from clients and try and prioritise without sort of upsetting people – put the mower and Whipper Snipper ones in place and look after the people that aren’t actually living at home at the moment.

“We’ve just got to look after the more needy people as well as we can. We have to talk to the clients, show empathy, but at the same time prioritise when we launch a claim. Insurers are pretty good like that, get some emergency payments out to them for their policies.”

Some clients are taking action themselves, he says, with a landlord in Station Street, Seymour, ripping up carpet at a barber.

“He just wants to get back in there and just start cutting hair again. They’re going to get covered, but if he’s got to stand on concrete for a while until we get in and recarpet – they don’t care less.”

Mr Clarke says criticism is sure to come as insurers are swamped with claims and battling worker shortages all along Australia’s east coast.

“I’m sure the media will pick up on certain areas but we’ve put up with that for a long time, so we’ve just got to do our best. It doesn’t matter what the insurance companies do, or the brokers do, there’ll be people that just aren’t happy. So we’ve just got to deal with that,” he said.

“Hopefully we file-noted everything that we’ve offered people – flood cover in different areas. A lot of them didn’t want to pay it. That’s going to be the issue we have.”