After much reading, interpreting, analysing, re-reading, re-interpreting and re-analysing, we have finally put together StrataRatings inaugural set of 2018 ratings!

We are a completely independent ratings agency and run a similar business model to Canstar. We will never take a payment from an insurer for a favourable rating. The only income we accept from an insurer is a small licencing fee which will allow them to use the rating logo their policy has achieved. This is a flat rate for all insurers so as no bias exists.

Autonomous vehicles – an awesome concept. Punching in your destination, having a nap and waking up where you need to be – what could be better.

But this has been talked about to death so let’s look at something new and exciting!

Now if you’re deep down the rabbit hole of blockchains and cryptocurrencies, you’ll have heard of Decentralised Autonomous Organisations – DAO’s. For the rest of us though, a DAO is basically an organisation that exists only as computer code. It is controlled by no-one, has a set of rules held on a blockchain and can hold assets of its own.

One year. One loop around the sun.

That’s how long your strata insurance policy runs for.

It seems like a reasonable frame of time for an insurance policy but is there a better length of time?

As we know, our strata committee volunteers have a lot on their plate and will generally delegate what they can to their Strata Manager. Unfortunately, this usually includes one of the biggest expenses for a scheme and the single largest financial risk transfer for all owners – insurance.

Some very exciting R&D is currently underway attempting to reduce insurance claims in strata blocks using the internet of things (IoT).

To refresh your memory, the IoT is a network of physical devices that talk to each other. In strata, it can include fire systems, power systems, water systems, cameras, appliances or basically any electronic device that can communicate with another electronic device.

It may be easy to think that all insurers are ruthless penny pinchers when it comes to claims including those of the strata kind but data from the Insurance Council of Australia released earlier this year suggests otherwise.

It turns out that strata insurers have one of the highest claim acceptance rates in Australia at 97% of claims lodged. Compare this to home insurers who only accept 93.8%. This means that home insurers have a denial rate that more than doubles strata insurers!

If you don’t have a particularly good ad blocker like me, you’ll likely have become aware of a bunch of insurance comparison websites coming online over the past few years. Each marketing team has come up with their own attempt at insurance comedy including the dopey clown voice-over of Choosi, the yelling immigrant wife of iSelect and that weird Russian meerkat thing of Compare the Market.

Like the ads or not, these services do a great job in allowing Aussies the ease of going to their website and comparing all that the market has to offer in terms of insurance. Or so one would think.