RACQ Insurance has joined the growing list of insurers looking to add flood cover as standard in their householder policies.

CEO Bradley Heath told last week’s Sydney sitting of the House of Representatives committee inquiry into the operation of the insurance industry during disaster events that RACQ Insurance hopes to offer full flood cover to policyholders as standard from July 1 next year.

Flood cover from RACQ is currently a policy option, but the lack of availability of flood-mapping data, particularly in Queensland where all of the company’s business is written, has prevented the insurer from offering it as a standard cover.

The final decision on making cover available to customers will still rest on the availability of data, but Mr Heath says RACQ has recently undertaken its own data collection project, approaching local government bodies throughout the state to ascertain what data is available.

He says there is more Queensland flood data available now than when RACQ last investigated the issue.