The Queensland and New South Wales severe convective storm (SCS) outbreak between 21st and 27th November 2025 is estimated to have caused an insurance industry loss of AUD 2.663 billion, according to PERILS, the Zurich-based catastrophe insurance data provider.
PERILS’ initial industry loss estimate is based on data collected from affected insurers, and covers property and motor hull lines of business.
During the period in late November, SCS outbreaks battered Australia’s East Coast, with large hail, damaging winds, and intense localised rainfall as storm activity impacted regions between Brisbane and Sydney.
As per PERILS, the largest event occurred on November 24th in South East Queensland, an area that saw hailstones as large as 14cm in diameter and widespread damaging wind gusts.
On November 25th, the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) declared the South East Queensland event an Insurance Catastrophe, which was expanded on November 28th to all postcodes in both Queensland and New South Wales.
Darryl Pidcock, Head of Asia Pacific & Cyber at PERILS, commented: “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. This 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.
“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 AUD 1bn in the current decade, compared to three in the previous decade, none between 2000 and 2009, and two between 1990 and 1999.”
PERILS will release an updated estimate of the market loss for the Queensland and New South Wales SCS outbreaks on February 27th, 2026, three months after the event end date.
