Thunderstorms, giant hail dent insurer’s bottom line
Devastating hail and thunderstorms have resulted in tens of thousands of insurance claims for one of the nation’s largest insurance companies, hurting the company’s temporary earnings.
Suncorp paid out $542 million in damages from the storm alone that damaged vehicles and property in southeastern Australia on 25 November.
The baseball-sized hailstorm 9cm in diameter enveloping south-east Queensland is likely to be one of the costliest storms in Suncorp’s recent history.
Storms in eastern Australia and New Zealand on October 25 caused Suncorp to have to pay $358 million in compensation.
Overall, Suncorp received 71,000 natural disaster claims in the six months to December.
Suncorp paid $1.3 billion in total; This was over $453 million in natural hazard allowance.
Most of the damage was caused by hail, and the 26,400 hail-related claims totaled $708 million.
“This has been a challenging period for the entire insurance industry, with extreme weather events,” Suncorp CEO Steve Johnston said in a statement on Wednesday.
Suncorp is supporting customers affected by severe weather events and continues to settle previous complex claims, including ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred and flooding in Queensland and NSW.
Finance chief Jeremy Robson said hail events were “relatively random in terms of weather” and there was a less-than-clear link to climate change dynamics.
Suncorp reported on Wednesday that net profit in the first half of 2025/26 fell 76 per cent to $263 million, from $1.1 billion a year earlier.
Cash earnings also fell sharply, falling from $828 million to $270 million.
Suncorp collected $7.69 billion in gross written premiums in the six months ending Dec. 30, up 2.7 percent from the previous year.
The company said it used 15 different AI chatbots to manage more than 1.6 million digital customer interactions in the half, an increase of more than 28 percent.
Shares of Suncorp, which announced a first-half dividend of 17 cents, fell more than four percent to $15.33 in midday trading on Wednesday.
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