With the busy holiday season approaching, it’s time to take a look at your business, and make sure you’re prepared for what’s coming next. This quarter, we outline issues affecting Australian businesses, including a major cyber security development that comes from Australia now having its own .au domain names.
Protecting your assets is also on the minds of many business owners as building costs have escalated significantly over the past 12 months. Luckily, we have struck an agreement with MCG Quantity Surveyors to provide affordable and accurate property and construction valuations.
The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) has advised Australians to prepare their properties for a wet spring and possibly summer across eastern Australia following the Bureau of Meteorology’s (BOM) declaration of a La Niña weather pattern.
The ICA published its top five preparation steps to help Australians prepare for the heavy rainfalls better:
• Review all building, contents, and landlord insurance policies, specifically coverage for flood, storm and temporary accommodation for people and pets.
• Review your building and contents sum insured to check if the insurance sum matches current replacement, repair, and rebuild costs for your home and contents. Using a building and contents insurance calculator to check the current value helps avoid underinsurance.
• Prepare a room-by-room inventory of the contents of your home to help determine if you have enough insurance.
• Ensure you are covered now before the La Nina rain falls because some insurers may place a temporary embargo on new policy sales if storm and flooding are imminent.
• Inspect your property and take practical steps, such as clearing the gutters and downpipes to help water escape. Additionally, ensure your roof, windows, and doors can withstand heavy rainfall.
We can’t control the weather, but there are practical steps we can all take to reduce the risk storm and flood can bring or make recovery from those events easier.
Getting this groundwork correct is going to help you manage your business better through a time of increased uncertainty and economic pressures. Carefully considered risk management plus more individualised cover will lead to greater peace of mind.
Please keep reading as we take a closer look at these issues along with some other factors facing the Insurance Industry in the final quarter of 2022. As always, if you’d like to discuss any of the issues raised, please contact us at [email protected] or on 1800 366 085.
HAVE YOU SECURED YOUR .AU DOMAIN?
The arrival of .au web domains in mid-September is generally good news. However, the Australian Cyber Security Centre has also deemed this as a cyber security risk… If you plan to stick to using current domains such as .com, .com.au, .net.au, .org.au, .gov.au or .edu.au, just ensure you reserve any .au versions of your domains. Now that .au domains are active, anyone, including cyber frauds, can register the .au versions of your web domains. For instance, a cyber thief wanting to pass as insurance.com.au could legally register insurance.au, making it easy to impersonate that organisation. At a quick glance, the .au version of a URL, looks much like .com.au, allowing fake emails or web landing pages to look more legitimate.
So, make sure you protect your organisation or business by reserving the .au version of your domain ASAP. Ask your IT support to assist you or simply go to the site used to register your current domain such as Webcentral, GoDaddy, etc. You can then reserve the .au version of your domain without using it.
LOOKING TO A MANAGEABLE FUTURE
We believe the insurance clock sits at around 10 o’clock – some distance from midnight, but the frequency and severity of catastrophic weather events this year and the Bureau of Meteorology’s predictions for continued La Niña events throughout Spring and Summer means the industry will have little choice but to raise premiums by 8% – 12% through 2023.
The exact level of increase and how long premiums rise depends on factors including; industry sector, location, prior claims and the insured party’s approach to risk management. Crucially, you can still work with your insurance adviser to manage your premiums and mitigate increases.
AVOID THE PITFALLS OF UNDERESTIMATING YOUR PROPERTY VALUE
An exclusive IA network agreement now gives you affordable access to MCG Quantity Surveyors. They will provide you with a professional accurate valuation of both the existing property and its replacement costs at a flat rate of just $600 plus GST for assets under $10million in value.
MCG’s service includes a fully itemised report, comparing current property assets to corresponding insurance arrangements, highlighting where cover is lacking. It examines both actual value and projected construction costs, removing assumptions and guesswork that could prove costly to you in the event of a claim.
Accurate valuations of key assets are essential for the right insurance. It helps avoid the underinsurance trap that often arises from using certain online cost calculators or simply guessing values based on previous years.
Better risk management is the theme that comes out of this quarter. Frequently this comes down to the smaller things like knowing your businesses individual needs. Or helping provide you with more accurate information in the form of a professional property valuation. It also comes down to ensuring a fraudster can’t easily impersonate your business to your important network.
And remember, we’re here to help you too. If you have a question about anything in this newsletter, don’t hesitate to contact us.
Should you ever require assistance, rain, hail or shine, please call our 24/7 Emergency Claims Response Line on: 1300 831 094