LMI claims preparers, already heavily committed to the Queensland floods, are already receiving and assisting flood victims in central Victoria.

“It has been quite a time of late. Our New Zealand team is attending to over 1,000 claims following the Canterbury/Christchurch earthquake which followed hard on the heels of the Melbourne and Perth hail storms”, said LMI’s General Manager of claims, Graham Cox.

“With the floods being so widespread and extensive, we have set up three teams to effectively manage our catastrophe response. In Queensland we have both a commercial team and a domestic team handling claims from Rockhampton and Emerald in the north to Toowoomba, Ipswich and Brisbane in the south.”

“In view of the number of claims being reported to us, we have set up a third team to handle claims in Victoria,” Graham said.

While the extent of the losses in Queensland has required us to transfer claims specialists and support staff from other offices, sufficient staff have been retained in all offices, including our new Auckland and Perth offices, to ensure that non-disaster related claims still receive the high level of attention they deserve.

The vast majority of our Melbourne and Perth hail storm claims have been settled, and this has freed up resources to throw at this latest catastrophe response. As the water dries up we will be assigning members of our response team to provide as prompt a service as possible.

Our team has been involved in handling catastrophe response claims for 40 years, and the lessons learnt from each one of these is incorporated at this time. While our team is busy, we do have further capacity. For claims assistance, you are invited to call the emergency hotline during business hours: 1300 LMI GROUP (1300 564 476); or for after hours emergencies, 0423 LMI CLAIMS (0423 564 252). Alternatively, email claim@LMIGroup.com.