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CANSTAR award Suncorp’s Cyclone Resilience Benefit with Innovation Excellence Award

April 9, 2017

The Cyclone Resilience Benefit from our Founding Member Suncorp is an industry leading innovation to improve resilience across Northern Australia. This benefit and its associated ‘Protecting the North’ shared value strategy is an investment that could create enormous community benefits that keep people safe, make insurance more affordable, create jobs, and grow the economy.

Suncorp Insurance, in collaboration with James Cook University (JCU) has created the Cyclone Resilience Benefit to make home and contents insurance premiums cheaper for home owners in Northern Australia who protect against cyclone damage.

What is the Suncorp Cyclone Resilience Benefit?

The Suncorp Cyclone Resilience Benefit is a benefit in home and contents insurance policies that effectively offers a 20% discount on premiums for home owners in Northern Australia who upgrade their property to protect against cyclone damage.

In 2015, CANSTAR analysed the Build To Last report created by Suncorp Insurance in collaboration with JCU’s Cyclone Testing Station to tackle the problem of cyclone damage and expensive home insurance in North Queensland.

The report analysed insurance claims from previous cyclones to identify the vulnerabilities of homes and how communities and governments could minimise those vulnerabilities.

The JCU Cyclone Testing Station provided clear options for home owners to retrofit and safeguard their homes – from roofing support to cyclone shutters, to reinforcing garage doors.

Suncorp’s new Cyclone Resilience Benefit offers discounted insurance to home owners who undertake the recommended retrofit on their property.

Northern Australia is known to be a region hungry for jobs and vulnerable to tropical cyclones. Providing incentives to build and renovate homes to be more resilient to cyclone damage creates a powerful economic stimulus, improves the resilience of our communities, and builds confidence in the region.

The Cyclone Resilience Benefit and the broader Suncorp resilience strategy, ‘Protecting the North’, continue to be used as key resources for governments in determining future mitigation policies in northern Australia.

Suncorp’s resilience strategy has been recognised in the Australian Government’s 2015 National Climate Resilience and Adaption Strategy as a best practice resilience example, as well being the Get Ready Queensland (Department of Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning) Resilient Australia Business Award Winner.

In 2016, the Federal Government once again ordered insurance companies to make home insurance more affordable – and it would seem that Suncorp Insurance listened.

CANSTAR’s verdict 

The Suncorp Cyclone Resilience Benefit is an industry leading innovation to improve resilience across Northern Australia.

This benefit and its associated strategy is an investment that could create enormous community benefits that keep people safe, make insurance more affordable, create jobs, and grow the economy.

 

This overview of the initiative was originally published here.

For more innovative and award-winning products, visit the CANSTAR Innovation Excellence Awards for 2017

Read more about Suncorp’s ‘Protecting the North’ strategy

Read another case study from Suncorp: ‘Essentials by AAI’