The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) has released new figures on the two major severe weather catastrophes that have affected Australia so far in 2025, putting the combined claims burden for the insurance and reinsurance industry so far at AU $1.5 billion, which remains low compared to some industry loss estimates.
The two catastrophe loss events covered in this update are tropical Cyclone Alfred in March and the North Queensland floods in February.
In total, around 126,000 claims have been filed after these two events.
Almost 11,000 claims adding up to over $250 million in claims have been received by the insurance industry from the North Queensland floods, the ICA said, while fewer than 350 claims have been received as a result of the recent flooding in Western Queensland.
Cyclone Alfred is therefore the major driver of insured losses so far in 2025 in Australia.
The last month saw more than 20,000 additional claims being filed for Alfred, taking the total to now more than 116,000 claims received by insurers.
The total estimate for the cost of those claims is now AU $1.2 billion, of which roughly 27% have already been settled, totalling $146 million, the ICA explained.
The ICA also said that the average claim from the North Queensland floods is $23,000 compared to the average for Alfred at a lower $10,000.
The industry loss from Cyclone Alfred remains far below the industry loss estimate provided by PERILS AG at this time.
PERILS said that its initial estimate for the damage from Cyclone Alfred was almost AU $2.6 billion, but the company chose a particularly long event duration, of February 28th to March 12th 2025 which may account for at least some of the difference.
But, the ICA seems only to report on damage to Australian domestic market insurers, where as PERILS likely includes losses to international players as well.
Despite the costs from Cyclone Alfred, two of the big domestic market insurers (Suncorp and QBE) have already reported their Q1 2025 results, with both saying their natural hazard costs are still running below budget despite the tropical cyclone impacts.
Which means neither are set to benefit from any reinsurance support for these events.
