Following the myriad new offerings coming to market in the early part of the decade, the story of this last year has been one of stability and getting on with business.

We have one new entrant to the Commercial space focusing on some of the more unique risks.

After five new product offerings came to market in 2022, the past year has seen little in terms of new entrants, with the 2022 entrants spending the year finding their feet.

We’ve seen around 42% of policies receive an update however the vast majority of these have been minor in nature, refining certain clauses for practical purposes.

The strata insurance market has seen the recent addition of three new policies to market in the residential space and two to the commercial space. All new offerings are underwritten by Lloyd’s and are provided by two new underwriting agencies and one returning.

Little has occurred in terms of policy updates however this is expected after the significant amount of PDS changes occurring in 2021.

The strata insurance market saw two more policies being withdrawn from sale in 2021. A whopping 13 product offerings have come and gone since StrataRatings commenced just four years ago.

We have seen a healthy number of 82% of Residential policies and 83% of Commercial policies getting an update in 2021. Many of these updates have been in line with regulatory requirements however there have been some tweaks to policy benefits, monetary limits and definitions.

The strata insurance market saw another five policies being withdrawn from sale in 2020 which leaves products available for purchase down 25% from just two years ago.

We have seen a healthy number of 36% of Residential policies and 25% of Commercial policies getting an update in 2020. For the most part these updates were minor in nature with several insurers updating the cover they provide around disease now that Covid-19 is upon us.

Longitude Insurance has released new Residential and Commercial PDS’s effective for policies issued from 12 September 2020.

One of the significant changes in these new policy releases is the addition of a ‘Communicable Diseases Exclusion’.

You may recall that our 2019 Ratings unexcitedly had no changes from our 2018 Ratings. Well things have changed this year!

Again, we’ve seen a healthy number of policy updates in 2019 with 55% of residential policies and 63% of commercial policies receiving an update.

Since the Hayne Royal Commission there have been worries that insurance claims handling of any sort will require an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL), however draft legislation indicates only selected groups will now require a licence.

With Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and even Adelaide working on underground rail networks, the begging question is “Does my strata insurance policy cover damage caused by underground tunnelling?”

Whilst you’d think the risk of damage is somewhat low considering modern tunnelling techniques, it wasn’t that long ago that a block of units in Sydney not only suffered damage but partially collapsed due to underground tunnelling.

Professionally managing Defects and Maintenance & Repairs now take up a considerable portion of Strata Manager’s time, at an increasing cost to Owners.

Over the past fifteen years there has been a significant increase in non-compliant building practices (i.e. works not meeting the Building Code), and more recently non – compliant building products (for example the much published imported Cladding, fitted to thousands of buildings throughout Australia.