Year after year, Australian homes are lost to severe weather events. And yet, year after year, nothing changes. We rebuild in the same way, hoping it won’t happen again.

To break the cycle, Suncorp Insurance shifted its long term strategy from one of supporting ‘recovery’ to one of enabling ‘resilience’. This has led to multiple brand acts and industry-leading products that are shaping the insurance landscape in Australia.

Our case demonstrates the ability of strategy and creativity to not only influence a category, or even a business, but also its capacity to tackle the biggest problems facing the world today.

Each year in Australia, we see homes destroyed and billions spent on rebuilding due to severe weather events. And even more troubling is that these are now occurring with more ferocity and frequency.

There have been more Category-5 cyclones in the last 20 years than in the preceding 100. Severe flooding is occurring 30% more often in the Pacific region. And calamitous bushfire seasons are starting earlier, and burning for longer.

In other words, Australian homes simply aren’t built to withstand Australian weather. In 2020 alone, 134,000 homes were damaged.

Even as you read this, there are over 100,000 homes in North Queensland that are below minimum standard for cyclone safety, and 90% of homes in bushfire-prone areas across Australia which aren’t built to standard.

Problem definition: The place Australians think of as being safest - their homes - is increasingly vulnerable to a world experiencing rapid climate change.

AS OUR CLIMATE CONTINUES TO CHANGE SO MUST THE ROLE OF INSURERS

As one of Australia’s largest insurers, Suncorp is acutely aware of the problems of climate change. At present, 9-in-10 natural disaster claims include damage that could’ve been avoided if homes were built more resilient to begin with.

Furthermore, a staggering 97% of the industry’s investment goes into recovery after a disaster. Only 3% is spent on preparation and risk mitigation.

This is partly a function of legacy (i.e., how things have always been done), but it’s also an issue of effort. As then CEO of Suncorp Insurance, Gary Dransfield, once put it: “The country’s growing natural disaster risk has been put in the too-hard basket for too long.”

The task was to break the cycle of repetition, and to fundamentally change what role an insurer plays when the worst has happened.

AS OUR CLIMATE CONTINUES TO CHANGE, SO MUST OUR HOMES

With over 100 years’ experience, Suncorp has a long history of supporting communities whose homes have been lost to natural disasters.

Understanding that current building codes have been rendered obsolete by modern climate change, we looked to create a new standard, and then apply that standard to existing homes.

Suncorp’s ambition to ‘put Australia on the road to resilience’ is a multi-year strategic platform aimed to create awareness of the home resilience problem (Storm Score), define a solution (One House to Save Many), apply that solution to existing homes (Resilience Rd), and create insurance products that would enable and incentivise resilience (Build it Back Better, Cyclone Resilience Benefit).

Strategic solution: To shift Suncorp’s role - from recovery to resilience - by creating an entirely new standard for Australian homes.

We took one of Australia's most vulnerable streets and made it one of the strongest. We analysed each home on a disaster-prone street in Queensland, and applied the scientific learnings and techniques from 'One House to Save Many' to make each home more resilient to bushfires, floods and cyclones. Turning ‘Bowen St’ into 'Resilience Rd’.

The campaign was designed to teach Australians the value of resilience and how to make their homes stronger in the face of increasing extreme weather. And to continue to position Suncorp as an industry leader in resilience.

‘Resilience Rd’ is a continuation of Suncorp’s long term commitment to making Australian homes resilient in the face of climate change. Previously, ideas like ‘One House to Save Many’ have set the benchmark for what a resilient home looks like, and insurance products like ‘Build it Back Better’ and ‘Cyclone Resilience Benefit’ enable and incentivise more resilient homes.

Full results in information deck.

LONG TERM BUSINESS IMPACT:

• Industry-first resilience-based products ‘Build it Back Better’, ‘Cyclone Resilience Benefit’

• Market share grew 2-4pp, Suncorp shared the lead with RACQ by November 2022.[1]

• 30% quote uplift during Suncorp’s resilience strategy year 1.[2]

• 25.9% quote uplift during Suncorp’s resilience strategy year 2.[3]

• NPS grew from 6.4 to 14.4. at its peak[4]

• Spontaneous awareness increased from 39% to 42% and peaked at 44% during campaign periods.[5]

• Consideration grew from 34% in 2020 to 42% (Queensland metro) and 51% (regional Queensland) by November 2022.[6]

LONG TERM INDUSTRY IMPACT:

Suncorp aims to make resilience the most valuable thing an Australian insurer can offer and because of its success, the industry has shifted to a strategy of resilience. Since launching, competitors including RACQ[7], NRMA[8] and AAMI[9] have copied Suncorp’s resilience-led approach to position resilience as a marker of value.

The true intent of the resilience platform is to challenge conventional thinking around how we build homes, encouraging homeowners, builders and institutions to view resilience as a vital ingredient for homes today.

We also wanted to generate a conversation around building codes, as it’s important they continue to be reviewed in the context of the increasing impact of extreme weather. As we have seen, the campaign has already influenced conversations at an individual level, but also at industry- and governmental-levels too.

This gives us confidence that the benefits of the resilience platform will accrue over years to come, and perhaps even over generations.

Were the results simply because “everyone” is talking about climate change? No. While climate change has increasingly come to the front of the world stage for problems confronting humanity, so too has a global pandemic. In fact, COVID-19 overtook climate change as the main problem that was troubling Australians.

Furthermore, many of the conversations we’ve had since launch have been specifically around scaling One House and its learnings, as opposed to general “risk mitigation” initiatives.

Were the results simply due to increased spend? No. Investment was comparable to prior years.

Were our competitors unusually quiet? No. For many periods of the year, Suncorp’s share of expenditure trailed that of competitors’.

Did we just benefit from new product development? No. In fact, as a result of the learnings, Suncorp created an industry-first product, ‘Build it Back Better’, ensuring that homes requiring a rebuild are equipped with resilience enhancements.

Suncorp’s ambition to ‘put Australia on the road to resilience’ is a multi-year strategic platform that addresses the problem of home resilience at every level.

Setting the foundations:

Nov 2019-Dec 2020: Brand films and utilities (Storm Score) created awareness of the problem, and ‘One House’ was started.

Defining a solution:

April 2021: ‘One House’ launched. Creating the blueprint of a resilient home. Off the back of the learnings, industry first product, ‘Build it Back Better’, was created.

Applying the solution:

Feb 2022-Nov 2023: ‘Resilience Rd’ launched and ran. Learnings from ‘One House’ were applied to a vulnerable street in Queensland.

Embedding into culture:

2021-2023: We embedded resilience into culture using PR and major cultural partnerships (The Block, Grand Designs).

Leading the conversation:

2021-2023: Led by Suncorp, the Insurance Council of Australia launched Project Resilience, which aims to embed resilience into the National Construction Code by 2025.