Australia weather disasters may drive out re-insurers
4 February 2011 (businessspectator.com.au) – Suncorp Group chief executive Patrick Snowball has warned that reoccurring natural disasters might drive multinational re-insurance companies out of the Australian market. Speaking to ABC TV’s Inside Business, Mr Snowball said that many people in Queensland did not have flood insurance, which was causing re-insurers to avoid targeting the state. He said the driving force of premiums in the global re-insurance market was the frequency of natural disasters. “We’ve got to understand that if this becomes a year-in, year-out problem, the re-insurers are not going to be looking to their premium being risk mitigation in Australia, they’re going to think that it’s going to have to carry a premium,” he said. However, Mr Snowball further said that risk mitigation was just as important for home-owners and occupants as paying insurance premiums. Queensland houses need to be built to cyclone standards in order to withstand the weather, he said. Suncorp Group, which is Queensland’s biggest insurer, is currently the only provider of automatic flood cover in the area. Mr Snowball said the floods would not affect Suncorp’s ability to deceiver an increase in its margins of three per cent by 2012. …
