Suncorp’s ‘Haven’ to Report On Climate Risks Facing Every Australian Home

As climate change continues to amplify the severity and frequency of extreme weather events across Australia, Suncorp Insurance is working to help Australians protect their homes. That mission has now taken a major digital leap with Suncorp Haven, a new online platform designed to provide tailored insights into the specific climate risks facing every individual property in the country.

“One of the reasons we created Haven was to combat the ‘she’ll be right’ attitude many Australians still have,” Andrew Fergusson, chief creative officer at Leo Australia, told LBB.

“Many people think that their home will be safe because it’s never been affected in the past. But the reality is, we’re seeing weather events hit many areas that have been historically safe, and our data reflected that ever-changing risk.

“Haven taps into live APIs for many of its data sources. So, the information is constantly updated to ensure that it’s accurate to modern weather events.”

Year on year, extreme weather events in Australia increasingly leave more homes destroyed and more communities disrupted. The financial cost of these events can total billions of dollars. 

As a result, Andrew said Suncorp Insurance has “been on a mission to build a more resilient Australia, making homes stronger in the face of climate change.” 

“We started by building ‘One House to Save Many’, which demonstrated what a resilient home could look like. We then applied those scientific learnings to existing homes on a vulnerable street, renaming it ‘Resilience Rd’. And ‘Suncorp Haven’ is the next natural step. A digital platform that takes those resilient learnings to every home in Australia. Giving every homeowner a tailored report on what threats their home is facing and what specific things they can do to protect it.”

While the idea sounds straightforward, the execution has been anything but. Andrew describes the project as “a huge undertaking,” resulting in “two years of wrangling technology partners, massive data sets and navigating complex legal conversations.”

Built in collaboration with development team Le Polish Bureau, PXP, and internal teams at Leo Burnett, the platform uses 10 distinct technologies, 12 massive data sets, and multiple live APIs. 

Andrew said the three core components of data the team needed were ‘Natural Peril Risk Data’, which pulls from a variety of sources to determine a home’s unique peril risk, ‘Real Estate Data’ to identify aspects of a home that would need to be considered, and ‘Resilience Tips’, which were tailored to the homeowner based on all the information available about that particular property. 

“Alongside this, we used local weather data, historical weather data, and more,” he said. “We actually switched out data suppliers a few times throughout the process, ensuring that the final data sets were as robust and accurate as possible.

“It was incredibly complicated navigating data usage agreements with various suppliers and handling inconsistent regional property data. Development was also shaped by legal and regulatory requirements concerning geolocation accuracy, the use of risk data, and user privacy protections.”

Suncorp Haven also includes a number of features Andrew said “make the experience feel more personalised and entertaining”. This includes referencing local points of interest in the neighbourhood a person is exploring, and having the voice and tone of the script reflect the age of the home as it ‘talks’ to you.

On top of that, “the experience uses some pretty cutting-edge technology, including geo-visualisation that taps into the NASA AMMOS 3D Tiles web renderer to display and manipulate the newly released Google 3D tiles, creating an experience more cinematic than what Google provides out of the box,” Andrew added.

Suncorp’s EGM brand and marketing, Mim Haysom, posted on social media that she was
“excited to introduce our latest game-changing Resilience initiative, Suncorp Haven,” with the project “aligning to our purpose of building futures and protecting what matters.”

“Suncorp Haven is the continuation of Suncorp’s well-established and award-winning Resilience platform. However, this time we’re taking our resilience message from one house, one street… to every home in Australia.

“We’ve developed Haven to be available to anyone in Australia – not just Suncorp customers – because we are genuine in our commitment to creating a more resilient Australia,” Mim added.

At its heart, Andrew said the platform is about action through information, and empowering people with the knowledge to make informed decisions about their future.

“Suncorp’s ultimate mission is to build futures and protect what matters, and that’s what Haven is all about. Helping everyday Australians understand the weather risks they face and empowering them to be more resilient for generations to come.

“And as with any digital platform, we have the opportunity to refine and add features to the experience in the future.”