PERILS has issued its first industrywide loss estimate for the severe convective storms that affected Queensland and New South Wales in late November 2025, putting insured losses at $2.663 billion for property and motor hull business. The Zurich-based catastrophe data provider said the estimate is based on loss data supplied by insurers operating in the affected regions and relates to damage occurring over the period from Nov. 21 to 27, 2025.
Under PERILS’ standard Australia coverage definition, the figure includes residential, commercial, and industrial property, as well as motor hull exposures. PERILS plans to update the estimate as more claims data becomes available, in line with its regular reporting timetable. An updated industry loss figure for the November storms is scheduled for publication on Feb. 27, 2026, three months after the event end date.
The November storms formed part of a multi-day severe convective pattern along Australia’s East Coast, with repeated thunderstorm activity between Brisbane and Sydney. Atmospheric conditions enabled the development of very large hail, strong wind gusts, and short-duration, intense rainfall.
The most active day occurred on Nov. 24, when South East Queensland was affected by a more intense outbreak. Hailstones with diameters of up to 14 centimetres were recorded, accompanied by damaging winds, causing damage to building roofs, external cladding, rooftop solar installations, and motor vehicles.
The late-November loss estimate follows an earlier severe convective storm (SCS) sequence that affected South East Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria from Oct. 26 to Nov. 1, 2025. PERILS has set the initial industry loss for that East Coast event at $1.108 billion, also limited to property and motor hull classes. A revised estimate for the October to early November storms is due on Feb. 1, 2026.
Darryl Pidcock, head of Asia-Pacific and cyber at PERILS, said the November event adds to a series of large SCS losses in Australia. “This event is the second billion-dollar SCS event within a month and ranks among the top five SCS events in the last 60 years in Australia,” Pidcock said. He contrasted the November outbreak with the earlier storms in October, adding that it “was a significantly more destructive event than the October storms with hailstones the size of tennis balls or larger in some Brisbane suburbs causing substantial damage to roofs, facade claddings, solar panels, and motor vehicles.” For insurers, the clustering of these events in a short time frame raises questions about frequency, potential aggregation across catastrophe covers, and the performance of retentions. The concentration of losses in property and motor portfolios may inform pricing, deductibles, and risk selection in higher-exposure corridors along the East Coast.
Pidcock also placed the current decade’s experience in a longer-term context of Australian SCS losses. “Whilst there are differing views on whether there is an increase in the frequency of Australian multi-billion dollar SCS events, to provide some factual context, on a normalised as-if-today basis, Australia has already experienced five SCS events with industry losses exceeding $1 billion in the current decade, compared to three in the previous decade, none between 2000 and 2009, and two between 1990 and 1999,” he said.
For insurance professionals, the February updates from PERILS are expected to offer additional data for use in model calibration, portfolio analysis, and reinsurance negotiations. Market participants are examining the interaction between exposure growth, convective hazard characteristics such as very large hail and damaging winds, and the financial impact of closely spaced storm events on Australia’s property and motor insurance sectors.
