The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) has rejected criticism that the industry has refused requests from the Queensland Reconstruction Authority for data to help the post-disaster recovery.

The council has issued a statement outlining the assistance insurers provided to authority Chairman Major-General Mick Slater after he claimed insurers had refused requests for the location of homes and businesses that had made insurance claims.

The authority, which is charged with developing a reconstruction plan for areas affected by cyclones and flooding, had requested suburb-by-suburb statistics on damage.

Major-General Slater told The Australian newspaper that insurers have rejected requests for data, saying it would be a breach of privacy or too much work.

He said the authority wanted the information so it could be more focused in its response.

But ICA says it doesn’t have postcode-level claims data for Queensland, “but in February and March of this year [ICA officers] offered to provide aggregated regional data according to any geography the reconstruction authority cared to define”.

It says no areas have been defined by the authority, “and as such ICA has provided monthly statistics for three regions: Brisbane City, Lockyer Valley and Regional Queensland”.

“Insurers have also provided significant staff resources to assisting the reconstruction authority to process applications for funding from the Premier’s Relief Appeal, without which the applications process would not be able to be completed in a timely fashion. This process has worked well in previous disasters such as Cyclone Larry and the Victorian Bushfires.”