All the headlines from our Australia Topic Page, ordered by recency.
Jan 27 2020 // Australian insurers are well-capitalized and should be able to withstand losses from the 2019/2020 bushfire season, aided by strong capital positions and support from reinsurance partners, said AM Best.The ratings agency...
Jan 24 2020 // The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) has declared a catastrophe for damage caused by hailstorms that struck eastern Melbourne, the Australian Capital Territory and parts of New South Wales on Sunday and Monday (Jan....
Jan 24 2020 // Australian wildfires that have razed thousands of homes and blackened an area about the size of England may also create the nation’s first climate refugees.That’s the view of Michael Mann, distinguished...
Jan 23 2020 // Insured losses from major natural catastrophes in 2019 totaled roughly $53.0 billion, about 18% lower than the annual average since 2011, according to a report from Willis Re.This figure compares with Aon’s recently...
Jan 23 2020 // It took two years for Nigel Allison to build his mud-brick house on a sleepy southeastern tip of Australia, and just hours for it to be gutted by fire.The cherished three-bedroom home built in 1986 was one of several...
Jan 21 2020 // Willis Re, the reinsurance broking business of Willis Towers Watson, announced the appointment of Cameron Green as head of its International Casualty Reinsurance practice as well as chair of Willis Re Australia.In this new...
Jan 21 2020 // The New South Wales and Victorian state governments will coordinate the clean-up of insured and uninsured residential and commercial properties destroyed in the deadly wildfires.Under the plan, the states will appoint...
Jan 15 2020 // Severe storms are expected to bring some relief in the coming days from huge bushfires scorching Australia but the heavy downpours could also carry the risk of landslides and water pollution, officials said on...
Jan 14 2020 // Bushfires ravaging Australia have provided a foretaste of the kinds of conditions that could become normal unless the world moves rapidly to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases driving global warming, scientists have...
Jan 10 2020 // Australia’s bushfire season has months to run and could easily surpass the most costly fire season, 2009’s Black Saturday fires in Victoria, which had a price tag of an estimated A$4.4 billion (US$3 billion),...
Jan 10 2020 // Australia urged nearly a quarter of a million people to evacuate their homes on Friday and prepared military backup as authorities said the next few hours could be “very, very challenging” even as rain poured...
Jan 8 2020 // As the devastation from Australia’s bushfires widens, the insurance industry is calling for concerted action to mitigate the impact of climate change.Months of out-of-control fires have burnt an area more than five...
Jan 7 2020 // Firefighters are taking advantage of cooler weather to quell southeastern Australia’s wildfires that have killed at least 24 people and prompted stirring messages from stars at the Golden Globes.Some 130 blazes...
Jan 6 2020 // Exhausted firefighters welcomed cooler weather and patchy rain in blaze-ravaged southeastern Australia Monday after a calamitous few days, even as authorities warn of a return to dangerous conditions later this week.With...
Jan 3 2020 // Australia is in the grip of deadly wildfires burning across the country, triggering an emotive debate about the impact of climate change in the world’s driest-inhabited continent. The unprecedented scale of the...
Jan 2 2020 // As massive wildfires devastate swathes of Australia and supercharge the debate over the impact of climate change, government data show the nation has never suffered a hotter or drier year than 2019.The average temperature...
Dec 31 2019 // Australia’s wildfire crisis intensified on Tuesday as coastal towns across the southeast caught ablaze, forcing thousands of stranded tourists and locals to seek refuge on beaches.Thick black smoke billowing from...
Dec 30 2019 // Thousands of holiday-makers have evacuated a popular tourist spot in southeast Australia as a heatwave and strong winds fuel wildfires sweeping through the region.But with temperatures hitting 40 degrees Celsius (104...
Dec 27 2019 // The fourth and final insured property loss estimate for the hailstorms that hit the greater Sydney region in December 2018 rose to A$798 million ($553.2 million), according to PERILS, the independent Zurich-based...
Dec 23 2019 // Australia’s devastating wildfires, which at the weekend destroyed close to 200 homes and claimed another life, show no sign of abating and are poised to blight Christmas celebrations.Around 200 blazes were burning...