How to claim water damage on your insurance

Flood, storm or rainwater? In Australia wording decides if you're covered. How to work out cover, lodge the claim, and avoid mistakes that get claims denied.

The single most important thing to understand about an Australian water damage claim is that not all water is treated the same. Whether you are paid can come down to where the water came from, and that is written into your policy.

Do this first, before you call anyone

Turn off the water at the mains if a pipe or appliance failed, and stop the source of the leak if you safely can.

Cut power to the affected area at the switchboard before anyone steps into standing water. Water and electricity together can be fatal.

Photograph and video every room, the water line on the walls, damaged contents and the source of the water, before you move anything or start cleaning up. This is the single biggest driver of a smooth claim: insurers assess what they can see, and once it is cleaned up, the evidence is gone.

Get people and pets out of any water that might be contaminated, such as sewage, stormwater or floodwater, and treat it as hazardous rather than just wet.

Flood vs storm vs rainwater

Australia has used a standard definition of flood since June 2012, and it still applies today: the covering of normally dry land by water that has escaped from a lake, river, creek, watercourse, reservoir, canal or dam. Flood cover is often a separate or optional part of a home policy.

Storm and rainwater damage is usually different. Even a policy that excludes flood may still cover you when rain falls naturally and inundates your home, or when a storm drives water in through the roof. The Insurance Council of Australia notes that most insurers treat rainwater runoff as part of storm cover, though some will not cover runoff if you declined flood cover.

Because there is no single legal definition of storm or runoff, the exact words in your policy schedule matter. Proving which event caused the damage can get technical, and insurers sometimes rely on hydrologists to decide. Read your product disclosure statement and, if you are unsure, ask your insurer to explain your cover in writing.

Where a cause dispute turns on a hydrologist's report or another external expert's report, the Financial Rights Legal Centre confirms you are entitled to know why and to see the evidence the insurer used. This right is set out in the General Insurance Code of Practice, the industry's own claims-handling standards, monitored and enforced by the Code Governance Committee. The version in force today is the one most recently updated in October 2023, and the Code is currently being redrafted: a public consultation on the draft ran from 24 June to 21 July 2026 and has now closed.

Why IICRC certification matters for your claim

IICRC stands for the Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification, a nonprofit body that trains and certifies restoration technicians against standards such as S500, the widely used water damage restoration standard. It is not a government licence, and hiring an IICRC-certified company is not a legal requirement in Australia, so plenty of good local operators are not certified. But the training covers structural drying, moisture mapping and the documentation an insurer needs to assess a claim. If you are still deciding whether this job needs a certified company at all rather than a handyman or cleaner, see our guide to certified restorer vs handyman.

That documentation is the practical reason certification tends to help your claim move faster. A certified technician is more likely to produce the moisture readings, drying logs and assessment reports an insurer or loss adjuster expects, which cuts down on back and forth. It is a fair question to ask any company you are considering: are your technicians IICRC certified, and what documentation will you give me for my claim?

What documentation a restoration company should give you

A well documented job is what actually gets a claim paid without a fight. Ask any company you engage for three things: a written assessment report covering the scope of damage, the water category (clean, grey or black) and moisture readings by room, drying logs showing daily moisture and humidity readings for each affected area until it reads dry, and an itemised invoice for labour, equipment and materials that matches the assessment report.

Keep copies of all three as the job progresses, not just at the end. If your insurer or an assessor queries the claim later, this is the paperwork they will ask for, and a company that cannot produce it makes your claim harder to prove.

Direct billing vs paying yourself

Some restoration companies bill your insurer directly for approved work, so you only pay your policy excess. Others expect you to pay the invoice yourself and claim the cost back from your insurer afterwards. Ask which model a company uses before work starts, because it changes how much cash you need on hand in an emergency.

Direct billing is not automatic. It usually depends on the insurer approving the scope of work first, so get that approval in writing, or ask the restoration company to get it, before anything beyond emergency mitigation (extraction and drying) goes ahead. If you are paying yourself, keep every invoice and receipt, since insurers require documented costs before they will reimburse a claim.

Lodging the claim, step by step

Document first. Take photos and video of everything before you clean up or throw anything out, including the source of the water and the water line on the walls.

Contact your insurer as soon as possible to lodge the claim and get a claim number. Ask what they need from you and whether they will send an assessor.

Do not throw damaged goods away until you have checked with your insurer, unless they are a health hazard, in which case photograph them thoroughly first. Keep samples where you safely can.

You can make safe temporary repairs to prevent further damage, for example tarping a roof, and you should keep all receipts. Do not start permanent repairs before the insurer has assessed the damage.

If your claim is delayed or denied

You have a right to ask for the reason in writing and to see any expert report the insurer relied on. If you disagree, you can use the insurer's internal dispute resolution process and then the Australian Financial Complaints Authority, which is free. Free financial counsellors and community legal centres can also help.

For the scale of this problem nationally, and how the pattern differs in New South Wales, see our flood insurance claims statistics.

Sources

• Insurance Council of Australia, Flood insurance explained
• Financial Rights Legal Centre, Flood insurance factsheet
• IICRC, About the IICRC
• IICRC, IICRC Standards
• Insurance Council of Australia, Code of Practice
• ASIC, ASIC review finds insurers can and should improve claims handling
• Queensland Law Handbook (Caxton Legal Centre), General Insurance Code of Practice