A new professional association for building and engineering consultants working with insurance claims has been created to address concerns over a lack of consistency, professionalism and quality in expert reports.

Association of Insurance Building & Engineering Consultants founding directors Deniz Bekir and Andrew Morse say the group was established in response to apparent flaws in the standards, training and practices of experts examining proximate causes of loss. 

They are seeking members and sponsors, and say a CEO will be announced in coming weeks before a formal launch in October.

“We’re taking it upon ourselves to answer the call of what industry is requiring. As professionals, someone needs to put their hand up and start to form betterment that can only happen internally,” Mr Bekir told insuranceNEWS.com.au today.

“I think it’s going to be a major benefit to the industry. It’s a response to the current climate of what the insurance industry is facing ... in particular the quality and consistency of expert reports. It’s becoming a sizable business and to a maturity that an association needs to be in place. It’s a pre-emptive creation.”

As insuranceNEWS.com.au has reported, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority has previously urged insurers to ensure expert reports are of sufficient quality to cut the chances of lengthy, complex disputes.

The General Insurance Code Governance Committee also raised the issue in a report on home insurance claim denials, and it has cropped up during the government's ongoing flood inquiry.

The new association will provide tailored training and professional development for members to help improve accuracy.

“The understanding of these experts needs to be brought to a level to bring value back to the industry in the sense of fairness and quality,” Mr Bekir said. “We aim to have our members recognised as the preferred professional advisers concerning building and engineering insurance claims.

“It's been identified that these expert reports have skewed the outcomes of the insured with respect to their quality and that improvement needs to be made, and as an industry body we’re planning to do that.”

The association will also give experts “a seat at the table for discussions moving forward”, and it plans to lodge a code of practice review submission regarding potential prescribed minimum content requirements, including scopes of work.

“We’re trying to better ourselves with respect to the code of practice review and the identified issues with expert reports and our place in that discussion, and to bring a voice to the insurance industry from this perspective.”