Wet weather may be a curse for many sections of the construction industry but for insurance builders there is a silver lining to every cloud.

Managing Director Hew Williams from Watermark Constructions who has been in the insurance building industry for decades, said weather events are the bread and butter of the business.

“ It’s very cyclical around weather,” Williams said.

“We will ramp up and ramp down, around what that weather looks like.

“We’ve got a really sustainable staff base. Essentially when there’s more weather and more claims our business grows to be able to accommodate for that.

“We get a lot of information from the insurers who get long range forecasts. They do a lot of seminars around what they’re doing, and they have meteorologists on their teams, so we get that information. But it’s still like flipping a coin.

 “We haven’t had a huge amount of events over the last couple of years, so it’s been relatively steady.

“The only real, sustainable and predictable claim type in insurance is escaping liquid, which is your burst pipe.”

Insurance jobs are often the forgotten part of the building industry, but their combined footprint may surprise you.

In the Top 25 Queensland Builders Half Time Report, insurance builders, if you grouped them as one entity, would have been the third biggest builder in the state with 13,496 builds in the first half of the 24/25 financial year and a total value of $363 million, with jobs ranging from $1000 to $100,000.

Typically, the jobs run about 80 per cent residential to 20 per cent commercial but the values of the commercial claims are a lot higher.

Williams said dealing with people at what can be the worst time in their life has its challenges, but it also means the insurance building sector is well ahead of other parts of the construction industry when it comes to communication and technology.

“We’ve done a huge automation piece over the year and a half,” he said.

“We’ve got our own data warehouse which produces our dashboards and our metrics and our KPIs for our team.

“Data is a huge thing for us. I think predictive data and being able to utilize AI to predict trends around our data and what that looks like, as well as utilizing it to flag within our jobs in our teams where things might be getting dropped.

“If there’s a claim that’s say running long, and there’s been a lack of communication over a two week period we want our AI to alert that team member and make sure they’re not dropping the ball.

“It’s also ahead of us by picking up financial trends and where we’re dropping off, where we may be able to save money, or make money.”

 “AI automation is the aspect of the Insurance building industry that’s going to change the way that we operate and the serviceability of the builders for the industry.

“It’s going to be responsible for not just processing and front-facing aspects, but builders will utilise it to process efficiently, tick the items that need to be ticked, and provide additional service to the customer.

“You’ll be able to reallocate team and utilise the tech so you can have sustainable growth, because at the end of the day, it’s, it’s a huge service based industry, the customer or the insured are the people that pay the policy, and they’re the number one in the claim.

After years in the business he has these words of advice for people whose insured properties have been damaged.

“This might sound biased, but the large majority of insurers have gone through a pretty rigorous, basically independent review, government review, they’re not out there to rip people off.“

“People don’t trust their insurers, and I think that’s probably the first mistake they make, not working with them to get an outcome on the claim. They pay their premium to the insurer so it’s worth working with them to get a good outcome.

“I think the second mistake is probably just the lack of knowledge, the lack of knowledge around the options that you have on their policy.”

Author: Richard O'Leary

Experienced writer, commentator and political advisor, Richard held a raft of journalism and editorial roles before taking executive communication roles for multiple Premiers, Chief Ministers and even NBN Co. He grew up in his father’s construction business and joins The Good Builder as its founding Editor.