Using Council information to inform flood insurance quotes
It is important to understand your flood risk when selecting or renewing your home and contents insurance.
See how your property could be affected by flooding with our flood check property report. The report includes information on:
- the four types of flooding that can affect the city
- the likelihood of a flood of a particular size occurring at your property
- the expected depth of flooding on the property
- Council’s latest information for property ground levels and building floor levels.
Request a flood check property report.
How insurance companies define flooding
The standard definition of flood in Australia is:
"The covering of normally dry land by water that has escaped or been released from the normal confines of:
- any lake, or any river, creek or other natural watercourse, whether or not altered or modified; or
- any reservoir, canal, or dam."
This means most flood insurance policies only cover flood damage from these sources.
Policyholders with properties at risk of storm tide inundation should check their product disclosure statement. This is to understand if their insurance policy covers damage from other sources of water and 'actions of the sea', such as:
- storms and rainwater, and rainwater runoff
- ocean storm surges, sea level rise and high tides.
Learn more about flood insurance.
General flood insurance information
Insurers make their own assessment of a property's flood risk. The individual insurer will determine their insurance premiums based on their approach. They will generally consider various factors such as:
- how often a property may flood
- the size of a flood event
- the estimated cost of repairing or rebuilding a flood-impacted property.
Other factors like building type or construction materials may also influence insurance premiums.
A new development in a Flood-Hazard Area may need to be built to a certain flood planning level. However, this does not make the property immune to all flooding events. Large and extreme flood events can occur, reaching levels higher than the flood planning level. While these events are rare, they can happen and could result in extreme property damage. Insurers will consider flood events of all sizes when pricing flood premiums.
Learn more about flood hazard and your risk.
Factors that may affect an insurer’s assessment
Insurers handle many requests for insurance premium quotes per day. They need readily available information for prompt assessment when customers seek a quote. Insurers may not be able to seek out property-specific flood information for each quote. This is especially for:
- new subdivisions or developments where ground levels or minimum floor levels have been raised to reduce flood risk
- buildings elevated on piers above the possible flood level
- buildings located on a higher part of a large rural block away from flood-affected areas.
Insurers may rely on pre-development flood risk information to inform their insurance premium quote. This is if they don't have access to new development information. During their review process, they may welcome information that helps the accuracy of their flood risk assessment. This could include a flood check property report.
Improving the accuracy of your insurance quote
To improve the accuracy of an insurer's quote, request a flood check property report.
The reports provide Council’s latest flood information for existing properties. These are the most up-to-date and reliable source of flood information based on Council's current available flood modelling.
You can download your report to determine if your insurer may need to revise their quote. The following information found in the reports may support your discussions:
- For new developments, updated reports will reflect new ground-level information and new flood risk information for the property. If the summary page in the report shows green ticks, this should clarify to insurers that the property has immunity to the three standard flood and storm tide events. These are described in Council’s flood check property reports.
- The flood map in the report may help to confirm if the building footprint is outside of the mapped flood area. This is particularly for buildings on large rural blocks.
- The report provides information on the property's ground levels and the estimated minimum habitable floor heights of buildings. You can compare this information to property flood levels. This is to determine if flood levels could reach the height of the building's floor levels.
If your insurer does not consider this information and you are not satisfied with the insurance, you can shop around for better coverage.
Information that is not suitable to inform insurance quotes
Council’s Planning Scheme related flood information products cannot be readily updated. This includes the Flood hazard and Coastal hazard - Storm tide inundation overlay maps. This means they don't reflect current conditions or ongoing changes to the landscape from new development. Their purpose is to trigger flood-related requirements of the Planning Scheme for new development.
This information is not suitable to inform flood insurance premium quotes. Insurers can instead use Council’s flood check property reports. These are the most up-to-date, property-specific source of flood information.
Request a flood information letter
If you are in a new development and an update to your flood check property report is pending, you can request a flood information letter from Council. The letter will use approved development design drawings to confirm new ground-level information and changes to the flood conditions and flood immunity for the property.
To request a flood information letter, email eppmailbox@moretonbay.qld.gov.au.
In your email, include the property address and explain why you need the information. For example, you need the letter to support an insurer’s review of your flood insurance premium, or for the sale of a property. Many major insurers have specific flood premium review processes. They may appreciate information from the report or letter to enhance the accuracy of their flood risk assessments.
After submitting your request, allow at least one week to receive a response from us, as it may take time to complete the required investigations.