We speak with two businesses who were able to minimise interruption after the Queensland floods thanks to prompt action from their brokers and insurers.
Smash Repair firm motors on
Les Winter’s Smash Repair firm was one of the scores of businesses that were inundated by rising floodwaters in Brisbane. After abandoning the shop, he called his broker, Ken Pitts from Insurance Aid General Brokers, to let him know the situation and to ask about his cover.
“He reassured me I was covered and told me to photograph everything,” Winter recalls.
Darren Trott, Zurich General Insurance Head of Customer Care, visited Winter with the broker and the damage in the shop was overwhelming. The floodwaters had reached the ceiling of the premises and all the equipment – from the tools Winter used to repair cars to the office computers – was water damaged.
Zurich offered Winter $75,000 against the cost of the damage to help him with cash flow. Trott adds: “He was so grateful and he knew he was in safe hands because he had plenty of cover and the right advice from his broker."
Winter says the situation has been “gut wrenching”. Not only was he “spending like a drunken sailor” to get the shop up and running again, he was concerned about the wellbeing of his staff and clients.
However, the “wonderful support” from his employees, his broker andinsurer has helped. “I feel for the neighbours who didn’t have the foresight to read their policies and check that they were insured,” Winter says.
Back in business to beat off competition
It didn’t take long for Specialty Products’ number-one competitor to start muscling in on the company’s client base as it was mopping up after the Brisbane floods.
Specialty Products provides umbrellas, cafe blinds, cafe awnings and the like for cafes around the country. Managing Director Marc Sax buys the stock from China, with most of it coming flat-packed in cardboard boxes. The premises suffered substantial damage during the Queensland flood catastrophe.
In the warehouse, Sax had lost a good three quarters of his stuff – at a cost of between $450,000 and $650,000 – which was significant enough to render him out of business at that point.
“Marc expressed a real concern that his competitor was already attacking his customer base," says Darren Trott, Zurich General Insurance Head of Customer Care. "As every day was passing, you could sense that Marc was fearful of losing his market share and watching the business he’d grown go down the drain.”
Lots of photos were taken of the stock so they could reconcile the claim as soon as possible. While you may initially think that it’s only plastic umbrellas – they can be wiped down and they’d be okay – but when you consider all the bacteria that was in the water, the task of opening up the boxes, cleaning the goods and then re-boxing wasn’t economical.
Over a cup of coffee with Sax and his broker, Citycover’s Tony Graves, Trott offered to pay $310,000 of the claim straight away to help him get on track. Ten thousand dollars of that amount was to reimburse Sax for the work already done on the clean-up.
Sax had never made a claim before but says he “always believed in the broker situation”. In a letter to Zurich, he wrote:
“The early release of funds from the impending claim, not to put too fine a point on, it is a ‘life saver’. We are now in a position to immediately purchase and transport replacement stock. With the continuing support of our clients, Zurich has put Specialty Products Group in the position to ‘continue business as usual’.
“The 2011 floods in Brisbane have been, and will continue to be, a huge burden on those affected directly and indirectly. My insurance company has made it a lot less of a catastrophic event for me, my family, my staff and my business.”
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