Supporting our customers affected by the East Coast’s wild weather
The past week’s weather events have seen large parts of Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland inundated by severe storms and above-average rainfall, resulting in flash flooding, heavy winds and hail.
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The Queensland town of Maryborough has been one of the hardest-hit areas, with flood levels peaking at 10 metres on Sunday night following 650mm of rain recorded in the Wide Bay region on Friday.
Affected customers are being urged to prioritise their safety and then lodge their claim when it is safe to do so. Customers in Maryborough received a proactive SMS on Monday encouraging them to claim online.
We are working as safely and as quickly as we can to provide support for our customers and communities and our Customer Support Team is on standby for deployment or to support virtually.
Head of Disaster Response & Event Claims Cath Stewart
Suncorp become the Principal Community Partner of the Queensland State Emergency Service (SES) in 2020. As part of our ongoing commitment, we offered our support to the Queensland SES volunteers as they responded to the Maryborough community.
“We are working as safely and as quickly as we can to provide support for our customers and communities and our Customer Support Team is on standby for deployment or to support virtually,” explained Cath Stewart, Head of Disaster Response & Event Claims.
Suncorp’s new Event Control Centre has significantly elevated our disaster readiness and our ability to proactively support our customers.
“Through the Event Control Centre, our teams have access to weather mapping, which is overlayed with customer policies across multiple levels of mapping including aerial images of homes and businesses down to street level,” explained Ms Stewart.
“This technology allows us to identify customers who are potentially impacted by weather events and understand key details about their cover. For the Maryborough floods, we’ve used this data to proactively reach out to those customers and to allocate specific builders and hydrologists to optimise our Assessing and Claims Management strategies.
“As severe weather continues to sweep the East Coast, we will be making welfare calls to customers in impacted areas and urging customers and communities to stay up to date with the latest weather warnings. We will monitor the situation closely and respond as needed.”
