What happens when lodging becomes a liability?

A podcast series with Cotality Australia

As billion-dollar natural disasters become increasingly common, insurance is turning into a fragile links for the property ecosystem. Premiums are spiking. Policies are getting dropped. And in some of the most vulnerable parts of the U.S. and Australia, coverage is disappearing altogether.

In Florida, average insurance premiums have surged by more than 60% since the pandemic. In California, multiple insurers have paused or exited the market altogether. In Australia, similar challenges are playing out across flood- and bushfire-prone regions, where the cost of coverage has soared to unaffordable levels. Some insurers have withdrawn from entire areas. And for many homeowners, the message is clear: if you live in a high-risk area, you might be on your own.

The ripple effects of unaffordable — or unavailable — insurance reaches beyond individual households and is distorting entire housing markets. In both countries, these pressures are feeding into broader questions of housing affordability, financial futures, and even bank lending practices.

So how did we get here? And is there a path forward that doesn’t involve leaving the most vulnerable communities behind?

To unpack the answers, Cotality Australia’s head of research, Eliza Owen sat down with Cotality Chief Data and Analytics Officer John Rogers as well as Cotality’s President of Insurance Solutions Garret Gray and Tom Coad, who leads the banking and finance segment at Cotality Australia. The conversation offered a cross-continental look at the drivers of today’s insurance disruption—and some of the innovations aiming to turn the tide.

In this episode:

2:37 – How have recent natural disaster events in the U.S. and Australia shifted how we understand environmental risk?

5:47 – How has natural disaster response changed in the last 10 years, and what role does data play in disaster response?

9:53 – How is the property industry keeping up with the increasing severity of natural disasters?

14:31 – Where are the biggest opportunities to build smarter, safer communities?

17:45 – Erika Stanley goes over the numbers in property market in The Sip.

18:50 – Why is it becoming more difficult to insure high-risk homes?

20:56 – How can better data and insights help insurers mitigate risk rather than exit the market.

25:22 – What is one change that could effectively help insurers prepare for environmental risk?

Transcript

Eliza Owen:

Welcome to Beyond the Buildings by Cotality. I'm your host, Eliza Owen, and today we're taking a break from regular programming to explore the property industry from an Australian point of view. Even though we're changing our perspective. In this episode, we're still going to satisfy our collective curiosity, explore questions from every angle and look beyond the obvious. With every conversation we illuminate what is possible. Today's episode is part of a special three-part series on sustainability where we explore how a changing environment is transforming the property industry from the ground up. Our changing environment is reshaping the way we buy, sell, ensure, build, and even think about property. One of the most visible and arguably most devastating ways it does so is natural disasters. In 2025, the LA wildfires and Queensland floods was stark reminders. The property isn't just an investment, it's shelter, and more than ever it's under threat.

So how do we respond and how do developers, lenders, governments, and homeowners plan for a very different future? To find out, I spoke with two people on the front lines of this shift, Garrett Gray and Tom Code Gart is president of Cotality Insurance Solutions business with years of experience helping communities and insurers respond to disasters. Tom is head of banking and financial services at Cotality Australia, working with clients to understand and manage environmental risk in the property space. Later in the episode, I'll also speak with John Rogers, Cotality, chief data and analytics officer, about one of the biggest challenges facing the industry insurance, why it's getting harder to access and what we can do about it. But first, let's welcome Garrett and Tom to Beyond the Buildings.

Tom Coad:

Thank you. Thanks lot.

Erika Stanley:

Before we get too far into this episode, here's a friendly reminder about how to see what's coming up next in the property market. To make it easy, we curate the latest insight and analysis for you online, find us using the handle at Cotality on all our social media channels. But now let's get back to our series with Cotality Australia.

Eliza Owen:

So let's start with what you are both seeing on the ground from a data and disaster response perspective. How have recent events like the LA wildfires and Queensland floods shifted the way we understand climate risk in the property sector? Tom, if you don't mind, maybe I'll start with you. Ye ah,

Tom Coad:

Absolutely. It was a really interesting experience to live through my first tropical cyclone, which then became an next tropical cyclone very, very quickly, thankfully, and it would almost felt like a COVID experience. Something's coming, you're waiting and then it doesn't. And that was actually a blessing. Ultimately, it meant that communities were able to get prepared and they were able to get sandbags and check on loved ones and make sure everyone had food and knew what they were doing when the power was going to go out. I think the questions that were raised off the back of that, how do our properties fare within those sorts of scenarios? Do we have the right sort of construction codes for the locations and how might that need to change? Which is a really important question, but the construction codes today really focus on new builds and I think most of the housing stock is existing, and we need to consider what we can do to help those properties become more resilient when we start to see events like this occur more often.

Eliza Owen:

Yeah, thanks Tom and Garrett, what about yourself?

Garret Gray:

Yeah, the LA wildfires, were an example of how wildfire risk is shifting from a typical wildland urban interface to something that we call conation, which is essentially when the fire extends to more of an urban area and the structures themself become the fuel source. This phenomenon has happened a few times before it actually happened in Laa recently Santa Rosa in 2017, and this is something that I was personally affected by. So I will never forget the morning of January 7th when the fires broke out, I was about 30 minutes from my home, got a call from somebody that was at my home saying The hills around the house are on fire. And what really scared me at the time was that I knew that my kids school was really close to my house. So the danger was really not about my house, although my house was in danger, but that my kids were so close.

And so a big part of my focus at the time was just getting to my kids, getting them into safety, and then I had to very quickly shift to a Cotality perspective and start serving our customers who were really needing to get data like aerial imagery and put it into our system to better understand how their portfolios were being effective in real time so that they can figure out how to stage both contracting crews and adjusters. So there was a ton of work that we were able to do with our technology to help customers respond to the really huge fires that were changing the industry.

Eliza Owen:

Yeah, that's amazing that you were able to make the shift and start serving customers right away, and thanks for sharing your personal experience of that as well. Garrett, if I can just ask, because your work at CoreLogic and now Cotality Insurance Solutions focuses a lot on disaster preparedness, response and recovery. What are some of the biggest changes you've seen in how insurers and communities respond to these kind of events compared to say five or 10 years ago?

Garret Gray:

Yeah, the main problem that we're facing is that claim volumes are consistently going up with the natural catastrophes that are popping up more and more throughout the country and the world, frankly, it's really driving severity up, and that's a really big thing for our clients to have to tackle. On top of that claim complexity is growing up, it's requiring a new set of advanced skills out in the field, and we have a ton of carriers who are now really starting to embrace technology to make that easier and to increase the positive customer experience that their policy holders are feeling. This really started, it's been happening for years, this kind of adoption of technology in the insurance space, but it really blasted forward during COVID because carriers were in a position where they couldn't send out adjusters into the field, and so they needed to have a virtual way of addressing claims, and so they're benefiting from that. But it is still a really big challenge that we are trying to solve at Cotality with both our data products and our workflow tools,

Eliza Owen:

And it's amazing how these significant events, whether it's a pandemic or a natural disaster or both, can really forward that technology and innovation. Tom, on data, I mean, it's only useful if people can use and access it. What role does education and access to data play?

Tom Coad:

I think that since COVID we've seen an ever increasing, and like Kara mentioned, it was there before, but really since 2020, this significant and ever increasing need to understand more about property, specifically property sustainability and resilience attributes, and then how they can be used. The more about properties and the more these events start to occur, the more it's front of mind when you're going through that decision making process. And at Ality, I think we've got a really important role, not just to make some of that data available, but to accelerate the ability and accelerate the understanding of that across our various different customers and various different homeowners, helping them make informed decisions at the time, helping them know what to look for and what else to, if you've lived in a flood prone area your whole life, you might be looking for that, but you might not understand some of the potential wildfire risks that are now in place that may not have been previously.

And that education piece is we've got a really big role in helping not just those homeowners but our customers to understand what that means as well. And that's a big shift for them. Currently, they're maybe a lender helping someone get a home loan or they're an insurer helping someone protect their property, but now they have to shift to, they become the conduit to explaining what some of these data sets mean, what some of these resilience aspects mean, and they become the first point of call. So for me, education is not just what does the data mean, but it's how does it help that homeowner or potential homeowner understand more about their property and what actions they can take to protect themselves and predict their families and those assets.

Eliza Owen:

Yeah. Great. Now both of you work at the intersection of natural hazard science and property markets. How well do you think the property industry is keeping up with the pace of the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters? Garrett, maybe we can start with you on this one.

Garret Gray:

Yeah, look, it's top of mind for everyone, especially in the US insurance industry, we are facing huge challenges. It's becoming harder and harder for companies to be profitable, and it's leading to an insurability crisis in places like California. Now, we are trying to help address that by helping carriers better not just price risk, but match what sorts of risks they want to add to the portfolio and how they can create sustainable portfolios. And it's something that requires a ton of data and analytics and frankly, intelligence beyond bounds for them to have confidence in making underwriting decisions, and we're constantly evolving our models to support them. We really look at our role as really helping bring more carriers to states like California by giving them the ability to really look at the risk in more granular ways by looking at each property with property characteristics and how those feed the different hazard scores that we're able to offer them.

Eliza Owen:

That's so interesting. And I mean with the individual property characteristics, I mean, that can come down to the materials like what a roof is made out of and that sort of thing.

Garret Gray:

Yeah, a hundred percent. And really every property has a different level of risk, not just by the material of the roof, which that's true. It could be the type of vents that they have around the property, the level of vegetation, how close vegetation is to the house, how much defensible space there is. In fact, the California Department of Insurance rolled out this requirement in the last year where there was 12 mitigation factors for wildfire, and we had to quickly respond and give image analytics that helped carriers look at those 12 mitigation factors, see how each individual property would score and help them adjust their premiums as a result. So other factors though are playing into this building codes. They're making a big impact in places like Florida, and you will see, I think here in California and in the Palisades, a real impact on how they decide to rebuild, hoping that they are doing so in such, in a more sustainable way in adjusting building codes to prevent something like this from happening again.

Eliza Owen:

Yeah, absolutely. So Tom, coming back to you, I mean, just going back to how you think the property industry maybe from that Australian perspective is keeping up with natural disasters. What are you seeing?

Tom Coad:

Very similar things being looked at? I think the construction code and the national construction code or the NC we've got here is frequently referenced, and do we have the right sorts of screws into the roofs for higher category cyclones is being considered and having gone through what was x tropical cyclone Alfred, you'd say yes, we probably do, even though we were not within a typical cyclone region, there weren't roofs that came off. I think there was one roof on the entire southeast Queensland that came off. So you'd suggest that the construction codes are probably up to standard for today, but that doesn't mean we stop looking. We need to keep assessing what those standards are, and we need to assess those other types of perils and hazards that may occur as well. We don't necessarily have, we've got defenses for storm surge, but how does that apply if they are more frequent and at a higher severity level? I think the way that the customers we work with the education piece, they're trying to explain some of these things to homeowners or potential homeowners is helping to bring forward that consideration. It's before you purchase, not 10 years in.

I think we have a long way to go, but we've definitely started on the journey to responding and to be able to help make these homes safer and better.

Eliza Owen:

So looking ahead, what needs to change, whether it's policy, data sharing, lending practices, or buyer awareness, where are the biggest opportunities to build smarter, safer communities? And Tom, maybe I'll go to you first.

Tom Coad:

It's hard to find a starting point in the property ecosystem. Is it when a property transacts? Is it when a property is protected, when there's a home loan, when it's sold again? But I think at every point at the same time would be the ideal. If we have to pick a starting point possibly with the agents and the real estate agent industry, we're already starting to see disclosures come into place in multiple states around what is this property? What are the potential risks with this property? The access to high quality data and insights about those properties is where we are really aiming to help accelerate those conversations and coming back to the education piece, help more parts of that property ecosystem understand about those homes.

Eliza Owen:

Yeah, sounds like a great start. And Garret?

Garret Gray:

Yeah, I think for me it's all about mitigation awareness and education. From mitigation standpoint, we have been able to demonstrate that when you build stronger homes and businesses in high risk areas, we can minimize damage. The recent hurricanes in Florida have shown this that building codes actually work, and I live in Los Angeles where hopefully there isn't a big earthquake anytime soon, but we're sort of overdue. But one thing we do know is over the last 30 years since our last big earthquake building codes were dramatically changed, and so properties are much more resilient to potentially a big earthquake. And so I think more and more of that needs to happen when we rebuild homes that are damaged. We need to rebuild them to a higher standard so that they aren't damaged again. And so I think awareness is a really big piece of that. And at Cotality, we have a phrase, know your risk to accelerate your recovery and understanding the risks and utilizing data solutions to help manage that risk can go a long way. And then educating not just policymakers, but homeowners and how they can really do their part to mitigate these risks, I think will go a long way to where we need to go to have a more resilient industry in general, where carriers can actually run businesses that have appropriate loss cost ratios, and homeowners can get insurance for their properties.

Eliza Owen:

I love that. Know your risk, to accelerate your recovery. That's fantastic, and I think that's a great point to end on. Thank you both so much for your time.

Tom Coad:

Thank you. Thanks, Eliza.

Erika Stanley:

It is that time again. Cotality just dropped new numbers about the housing market. Here's what you need to know. Summer's finally here, but along with the warm temperatures comes not so welcome weather. Think hail, tornadoes and severe storms. Cotality. Data revealed tornadoes caused major damage across the country with around 63,000 properties potentially affected in May. The estimated cost to rebuild those homes, nearly $16 billion hailstorms were also active between May 15th and May 18th. Hail over an inch in diameter hit more than 40,000 properties nationwide. According to Cotality, the most impacted areas included Orange County, Florida, Howard County, Texas, in Anderson County, Tennessee. So while you're enjoying the sunshine, it's a good time to stay weather aware and make sure your home is resilient to whatever the season brings. To find out more about how mitigation can influence reconstruction costs, visit Cotality.com/insights. There's also a link in the show notes, and that's the sip. See you next time.

Eliza Owen:

We've just heard how the industry is responding to rising natural hazards risk, but one area where those challenges are hitting hardest is insurance. It's becoming more expensive, harder to access, and in some places it's disappearing altogether to explore what's driving that and where the solutions might lie. I sat down with John Rogers, chief data and analytics officer at Cotality. Here's our conversation. Welcome, John. Thank you for being here.

John Rogers:

Thank you so much. It is great to be here in Sydney. Thank you.

Eliza Owen:

So let's start with the obvious. Insurance is becoming this kind of hot potato. Homes in high risk areas are getting harder to insure premiums are skyrocketing. What's driving this shift? How did we get here?

John Rogers:

Yep. It's definitely a hot potato in the U.S.. If I just took Florida insurance premiums, I've gone up 68% since the pandemic, Texas, about 55%. It's a big problem in the us. What's the driving forces behind it? You mentioned extreme weather events. So yes, they are increasing over time, unfortunately, and we monitor and measure that the building concentration in these areas are higher. So if I look at one in six people in the US are close to a wildfire event that's gone up a hundred percent over the last decade. Other factors are areas like reconstruction. Costs have gone up about 44% if I remember correctly, since the pandemic. That hasn't taken into effect tariffs, which we'll see over the next few months as we monitor that monthly. And then there's just different tensions between federal and state, and that causes some challenges. So yeah, it's a big problem in the us, but Cotality leaning in and trying to help solve some of these problems.

Eliza Owen:

That's very interesting and definitely reflects some of the things that we've seen in Australia as well. Now, you've said before that data alone isn't the solution. It has to be usable. So how can better data and climate intelligence actually help insurers manage risk more effectively rather than just exit the market?

John Rogers:

Yep. I'll take that question in two parts. I'll first talk about the macro level and then dive into insurers. At Cotality, we can measure the financial impact of climate to every single property up to the year 2050. Why that's good is once you provide a financial figure, it's all about the business case. So it provides focus. If I took Florida as an example, we are helping insurers reenter the market because we can get down to every single structure, every single property, and every property is different. Your nearest neighbor could actually be high risk, say to a hurricane wind, and you could be low risk depending on the material types, and it has your home be hardened to a certain type of hurricane. That's the level of detail we get to, and that helps insurers price appropriately rather than spreading risk across areas. So that helps a lot.

I can give you one other quick example is in California, we can identify if homes are resilient to wildfire. There's 12 resilient factors that insurers and the insurance commissioner look after, for which my fence is 12 feet away made of a certain material. My roof is made of a certain material, I've got certain type of eaves, I've got no flammable material five feet away from my home. We use state the art image analytics, identify that, send the signal to the insurer. The insurer will reach out to John Rogers at 1 2 3 Main Street and say, we can reduce your insurance premium. So that's good. So we're trying to lean in and help manage this hot potato.

Eliza Owen:

Absolutely, I mean helping the insurers and the consumer as well through potentially lower premiums. So we are seeing situations now where properties are technically uninsurable or unaffordable to insure. What does that mean for the wider property ecosystem lenders or investors or occupiers?

John Rogers:

Yep. It's causing a lot of amplification and compounding the problem of attainable homing in the United States. So imagine your debt to income score that when you and I apply for a loan, that debt part of that, that includes your property tax, your principal, your interest, and your insurance. And if that's spiking as high as it is, that can unqualify people. So it's definitely a problem right now.

Eliza Owen:

Yeah, fair enough. So some regions are experimenting with public private models or risk sharing schemes to keep insurance viable. From your perspective, what kind of solutions do you think could work in markets like Australia or in the us?

John Rogers:

Yeah, no, it's interesting. So obviously as a Cotality, we we're trying to help reduce insurance premiums holistically. There's also insurance types called parametric insurance, which is basically underwriting extreme weather events. So not a perfect solution, but it gives the homeowner the ability to ensure the house for a certain premium and get a certain amount of money back. That option is better than having no insurance whatsoever. Or often what happens, especially in California and Florida, is that you rely on the stopgap solution, which is a state backed insurance. So there's something called fair plan in California and Citizens in Florida, fantastic options, but you don't want that to be the only option. So a lot more, there's a lot more take up now in the US on parametric insurance, which is ensuring for extreme rare weather events.

Eliza Owen:

Wow. Zooming out, if you had a magic wand to change one thing about the way the industry approaches climate risk and insurance, what would it be?

John Rogers:

Yeah, no, if I had a magic wand, I think there's two areas I would use it on. One is legislation at the federal level. I think in today's climate, that would be a bit of a challenge between that legislation and how states operate. So if I put that to the side, I would love to take a leaf out of what we're doing in Australia with clean energy usage. So how to make every home in Australia with a rating of six, which is a good clean energy home to the homeowner that can reduce your utility bill by up to 70, 80%, which is just amazing. Absolutely amazing. I'd love to take that model and apply it to resiliency in the US so that if you are incented to improve your home, your insurance premiums will go down. And I would suspect if you list your house to sell, I think that could actually drive the value of the home up similar to what we're seeing in Australia with clean energy, just initial numbers coming through that it might increase by about 50 K if your home is of clean usage. So there's definitely something there to send the homeowner and help their wallet.

Eliza Owen:

Absolutely. I'm sure homeowners would love that. And it's good to know that Australia has some teachings maybe for the US

John Rogers:

100%. Absolutely. Hundred percent. Yeah.

Eliza Owen:

John, that's been so insightful. Thank you so much.

John Rogers:

Thank you so much. Thank you so much indeed. Thank you.

Eliza Owen:

Thank you so much, Garret, Tom, and John for joining me today on Beyond the Buildings by Cotality. And thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed our latest episode. Please remember to leave us a review. Let us know your thoughts and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to be notified when new episodes are released. And thanks to the team for helping bring this podcast to life producer, Andrew Barclay, editor and sound engineer, Romie Aromin, our facts guru, Erika Stanley and social media duo, Sarah Buck and Makaila Brooks. Tune in next time for another conversation that illuminates the ideas that will define the future.

Erika Stanley:

You still there? Well, thanks for sticking around. Are you curious to know a little more about our three guests? John Rogers is Cotality's Chief Data and Analytics Officer, and oversees research and development for the company, whether it's driving new solutions that understand the impacts on the real estate economy due to climate risk, or it's building groundbreaking models that identify suitable land for affordable housing development. The R&D group tackles major housing issues and works with many clients across the housing industry to drive growth and mitigate risk on their book of business.

Tom Coad leads the banking and finance segment at Cotality Australia, a data-driven technology company connecting the entire property ecosystem. Tom works closely with Australia's leading lenders to deliver advanced data powered solutions that support climate resilience, portfolio optimization, and sustainable finance goals. His deep knowledge of the Australian and New Zealand banking landscape combined with his understanding of evolving sustainability and disclosure frameworks makes him a trusted partner to banks and regulators alike, a champion of innovation.

Tom has played a pivotal role in developing energy efficiency and resilience solutions for the mortgage and property sectors. He brings a practical lens to climate and emission strategies, helping translate complex regulatory demands into real world action. Beyond his segment leadership, Tom contributes to Cotality broader product innovation agenda and fosters strong connections across the banking, property and climate sectors. Driven by purpose, Tom is passionate about the role of data and accelerating sustainable and outcomes. He actively supports initiatives that make climate risk insights more accessible and meaningful, empowering institutions and individuals to make informed decisions.

Garret Gray is an executive leader in president of total's global insurance business unit. Gray leads a team of industry experts focused on building market driven solutions that drive better customer outcomes throughout the property insurance ecosystem. Previously, Gray was the founder and CEO of NextGear Solutions acquired by Cotality in August of 2021. NextGear is an industry leading source of water mitigation job and sales management software, as well as claim scoping and auditing solutions. NextGear Solutions are used by 8,700 plus restoration companies across the United States and Canada in most of the top 25 US insurance carriers.

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