Your Advocate vs Your Insurer's Builder

After a disaster — flood, fire, storm, or cyclone — your insurer activates a managed repair program. In most cases, this means they assign a building or restoration contractor from their preferred supplier network. On paper, this is positioned as a convenience: one call, one contractor, insurer-managed.

In practice, two fundamentally different models exist for how your property gets restored:

"Who First" is not a slogan — it is a structural commitment about whose interests drive every decision on your job.

When your insurer assigns a contractor, the commercial relationship is between the insurer and the contractor. The insurer pays; the contractor's scope reflects the insurer's authorised budget. This is a normal commercial arrangement — but it is not the same as an arrangement where the contractor's obligation runs to you.

An independent IICRC-certified contractor engaged directly by you (or documented as working to your brief) produces a scope of works that reflects the full extent of damage — not a pre-approved budget ceiling. That documentation matters most when:

• Your insurer's scope has missed damage items (HVAC smoke infiltration, subfloor moisture, mould onset)
• The assigned contractor's work quality is below the IICRC standard
• You need to dispute an underpaid or denied claim through AFCA
• Repair defects appear weeks or months after the insurer closes your claim

Under Australian Consumer Law and the General Insurance Code of Practice, you have rights about how your claim is managed. While insurers can offer managed repair programs, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has ruled in policyholders' favour in cases where:

• The insurer's contractor did not complete work to an acceptable standard (s54 Insurance Contracts Act 1984)
• The scope of works did not reflect the full extent of covered damage
• The policyholder was not given adequate opportunity to raise concerns about repair quality before the claim was closed

In the IAG case published by AFCA, the insurer was required to pay an additional $89,000 after the original scope was found to have significantly undervalued the structural damage. An independent assessment produced by the policyholder was central to the AFCA ruling.

You do not need to accept your insurer's scope as final. An independent IICRC-certified assessment gives you documented grounds to request a review — or, if the insurer fails to resolve it, to escalate to AFCA at no cost.

AFCA publishes case determinations from insurance complaints. Recurring patterns in published fire and water damage restoration cases include:

These patterns are drawn from published AFCA determinations. Individual case outcomes vary. Source: AFCA Case Studies.

If you have concerns about how your insurer is managing your restoration claim, follow these steps in order:

1. Get an independent IICRC-certified assessment — Document the full scope of damage to IICRC S500:2025 or S700:2025 standard before the insurer closes your claim. This is your most important piece of evidence.
2. Compare the independent scope to the insurer's scope — Identify items that appear in the independent assessment but not the insurer's approved scope. These are the items to dispute.
3. Lodge an internal dispute with your insurer — All Australian insurers must have an internal dispute resolution (IDR) process. Request a formal review in writing, attaching the independent assessment.
4. Escalate to AFCA if unresolved within 30 days — AFCA accepts complaints at no cost to policyholders. The complaint must generally be lodged within 2 years of the insurer's decision.