As many people working in construction, archaeology, flood claims or farming know, Britain is a series of islands built upon various rivers, streams, brooks, springs, bogs, wells etc with some crumbly rock strata and clay hiding half of them.
Add on 30C degree variances in temperature and rainfall from summer to winter and you have a recipe for subsidence – not everywhere, but frequent enough. So can it be true that most subsidence claims are down to poor building construction and repair, rather than the typically soggy ground expanding and contracting with the seasons? Maybe so, here’s the word from Claims Consortium Group;
Claims Consortium Group (CCG) has warned that around two-thirds of subsidence claims submitted to insurers over recent years were not attributable to subsidence. The claims specialist’s analysis also highlights that a failure to correctly interpret these complex claims could be costing the insurance market millions of pounds in unnecessary payouts.
Analysis of all the subsidence claims submitted to Claims Consortium Group during the 2018 surge event year shows that over 70% were not attributable to subsidence. The repudiation rate for non-surge years – 2019, 2020 and 2021 – averaged 75%, and early analysis of the most recent subsidence surge event in 2022 looks set to show repudiation levels of at least 60%.
CLIMATE CHANGE, OR NATURAL VARIANCES IN RAINFALL?
The warning is countered by CCG’s claim that by their belief that, “conditions driving subsidence will continue to rise as a result of climate change and the supply of skilled, technical subsidence experts remains limited. “
So sifting true subsidence claims from other causes might get trickier, assuming that the land dries out as the UK has long hot summers, such as we did in 2018. Certainly no sign of drought this year, although average rainfall in 2021/22 was comparable to 2018. On a sidenote 2020 was an exceptional year for rainfall in the UK, despite a dry spell at the start of the first lockdown. More data from Statista here btw.
If you look back at 50 years of UK rainfall you see a steady pattern, with peak rainfall years being from 2009 onwards, so the UK is not getting warmer and drier as many climate experts predict, it’s actually getting wetter. On average that is, specific years can be outliers as regards very dry hot summers, like 2003, 1976 and so on. More here on rainfall averages from 1971-2020
Greg Rees, Head of Subsidence, Claims Consortium Group, commented:
“Our analysis shows that there remains a huge disparity between the volume of claims received and those that should be paid. But spotting which claims are genuinely the result of subsidence requires adjusters and surveyors to have real in-depth technical knowledge, a skill set which is in increasingly short supply across the market.
“The combination of the increasing incidence of subsidence surge events due to Climate Change and the limited pool of highly skilled subsidence specialists means that the insurance market needs to radically rethink how it approaches this complex area of claims – and fast.”
To meet growing demand Claims Consortium Group recently created a virtual centre of excellence of highly skilled, desk-top based, subsidence experts to drive informed and consistent decision making. Subsidence trained surveyors visit each claim to gather relevant information – from video captures to floor plans, spirit level measurements and more. Reliable, accurate and relevant data that can then drive informed and consistent decision making.
Claim information is delivered to the Expert Hub to make accurate and informed decisions. This approach has led to improvements in both efficiency and the time it takes for a claimant to receive an accurate claim outcome which gives the added benefit of ease of access to the key decision makers improving the customer journey.
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