Politicians should be focusing on how the insurance industry is dealing with claims from the recent natural disasters and worrying about policy wordings later, Suncorp Group CEO Patrick Snowball says.

Speaking to an Australian-British Chamber of Commerce lunch in Brisbane last week, he said the industry “has found it much more difficult to get the message out that its priority is attending to customer claims”.

“Nothing should distract from that, and while I understand the apparent confusion and frustration associated with the lack of clarity about flood cover and policy wordings, I believe these are matters that should be dealt with later.”

Mr Snowball says the industry needs to tell politicians and the public the claims stemming from these disasters are unprecedented and should be treated as part of the recovery effort.

“When we do turn our attention to other issues, we need to understand that management of natural hazard risk is a collective responsibility of governments, businesses, communities and individuals,” he said. 

“There is a tendency following natural disasters to quickly seek simplistic ‘silver bullet’ solutions to protect against future events or to focus blame on specific individuals or organisations for past events.”

He says it is “senseless to be promoting individual matters such as standard flood definitions, flood maps or policy wordings as solutions” rather than focusing on the ability to buy cover and the industry’s capacity to deal with disasters.

“The national economic importance of Australia's general insurance industry is not well understood by the public and there is limited understanding of how insurance works,” he said.

“When you are at the peak of a disaster response, it is too late to start educating the public about insurance.”

He argues the insurance industry’s role in cleaning up after these disasters is being lost as politicians focus on what is wrong with insurers.

“The key role currently being played in the Queensland recovery by insurance companies is being lost in political and media focus on what is allegedly going wrong rather than what is actually going right,” he said. 

“Insurance companies are currently managing about 100,000 claims from the Queensland and Victorian floods and Cyclone Yasi.

“On current estimates more than $2.5 billion will be paid in claims for those three major events – much more than the Federal Government will raise from its flood levy.

“These are the inconvenient truths that are continually ignored.”