Insurers continue to lobby the Productivity Commission for a national platform for information on natural disaster hazards.

Accurate data and consistent guidelines for collecting it are essential to enable decisions to be made around spending on prevention, the commission’s recent public hearing in Sydney heard.

The commission’s draft report on natural disaster funding recommends that $200 million be spent preventing disasters rather than repairing damage after the event.

But insurance industry executives say accurate data is needed to underpin decision-making on mitigation. They say information is often incomplete, out of date or duplicated.

IAG MD and CEO Mike Wilkins told the commission data “and understanding the exposures that come with it” will enable a targeted outcome and prevent political use of funds.

IAG Chief Analytics Officer Julie Batch estimates it would cost about $20 million to set up the database and $5 million annually to maintain it.

Insurance Council of Australia GM Policy Risk and Disaster Karl Sullivan says while the council has made considerable inroads on data collection, “it’s very much seen as an interim measure, before something more fundamental and sustainable can be done by government”.

The “insurance price signal” has helped convince local governments to hand over data.

Mr Sullivan says the insurance approach could be incorporated into a national data platform but insurers have spent considerable money, time, effort and resources on hazard data sets they use for pricing, “so it becomes difficult to then say how those data sets might be used publicly”.

A national portal could identify land zoning changes, avoiding situations such as that which followed the Blue Mountains bushfires, when homeowners found themselves underinsured because rezoning had raised rebuild costs.

The Financial Rights Legal Centre called for better communication of risk, such as through council rate notices. It notes Victoria’s Fire Services Levy Monitor has powers to examine insurers’ commercial data to understand pricing.

National Insurance Brokers Association CEO Dallas Booth told the hearing it is critical for risks to be assessed and understood. He says north Queensland brokers report many people are not insuring because of the high cost of cover.