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When Rick Maloney’s home in Mooroopna, Victoria flooded in 2022, he had to fight for two years before his insurer paid to fix the damage. In that time, the building sank into the soft earth and mushrooms grew between his floorboards.

“I had the skirtings coming away from the walls, I had the cracking in the walls … [but the insurer would] push me down another avenue … time wasting, in the hope that I’d just walk away,” Maloney says.

Maloney joined thousands of Australians complaining to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority when his insurer refused to pay out in 2023. Three years on, their numbers have surged.

Insurance companies are generating a record 100 complaints a day as they reject or struggle to handle day-to-day claims, according to Afca data shared exclusively with Guardian Australia.

Home-building insurance complaints rose to their highest level since 2022–23, averaging 24 a day in the first three months of 2026. Motor vehicle insurance generated 44 complaints a day, up from 31 a day last financial year.

The blowout in insurance complaints was driven by insurers’ delays in handling everyday claims, not natural disasters, Afca’s data shows. The situation is expected to worsen as rising fuel and freight costs add to delays.

Delays in processing claims account for the largest category – nearly a quarter – of all complaints, says Emma Curtis, Afca’s lead ombudsman for insurance.

Home building and motor insurance are particularly affected by delays, which Curtis attributes to a lack of materials and builders or spare parts and mechanics, especially for electric vehicles – set to worsen as EV sales hit record highs.

Travel insurance complaints have also risen, in part due to delayed processing, Curtis says.

Along with shortages of workers and materials, Afca attributes growing delays to insurers under-resourcing their claims-handling teams.

Internal complaints to general insurers also rose from 1.6m in 2023-24 to nearly 2.1m from to 2024-25, according to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

But nearly two in five complaints that reached Afca in 2024-25 hadn’t been logged internally by the insurer, which Curtis says shows either customers don’t trust their insurer to handle the issues – or insurers aren’t identifying complaints properly.

“Insurers need to put more resourcing into claims and complaints management,” Curtis says. “The customer is entitled to expect that they will get the products that they’re paying for or the service that they’re paying for at the time that they need it.”

The industry’s peak body, the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA), found insurers processed 86,000 motor and household insurance claims on average every day in 2025.

An ICA spokesperson says 1.7m of the 2m internal complaints to general insurers last financial year were closed within a day and only 14,600 took more than 30 days. In the minority of irreconcilable cases where Afca has had to determine either for or against the insurer, the ombudsman mostly upheld the insurer’s decision, they say.

But the council also warned in a statement in April that delays were set to worsen as the US-Israel war on Iran pushed up prices and slowed repairs.

“Preliminary industry data shows the increasing fuel costs are disrupting existing supply chains, increasing the cost of materials, and delaying labour to complete repairs to homes and vehicles,” the statement reads.

Afca predicted the ripple effects of growing delays would leave vulnerable customers worse off. Insurance complaints from customers in vulnerable situations rose to 14 a day in 2025 and the true number of Australians left in hardship while waiting is probably much higher, Curtis says.

Cases included customers with damaged or flooded homes who were left effectively homeless when their insurer stopped paying for temporary accommodation amid denials or delays.

“We hear some really terrible stories,” Curtis says. “Sometimes [insurers] don’t identify people who are experiencing vulnerability and they don’t treat them as well as they could.”

The Consumer Action Law Centre has continued to see steady numbers of calls for help from people fighting for months or years to settle their insurance claims, according to Meg Dalling, assistant director of policy.

Dalling says the industry has not fully learned from a parliamentary inquiry into the 2022 floods along Australia’s east coast, which handed down reform recommendations in 2024.

“What we saw after that parliamentary inquiry was a lot of really vocal commitments from the insurance industry to really clean up their act,” Dalling says. “We’re still not seeing them really move the dial.”

Some complainants from those floods had to fight for years afterwards. Maloney was only paid in January 2025, after Afca determined that the insurer Aami may not have covered him for cracking or movement but was still required to cover damage to chipboard flooring.

“They’re trying to save money, they’re trying to knuckle it down so their bottom line’s not taking a hit with expenses,” Maloney says.

“We need someone in parliament to actually bat for the little man against these insurance companies to ensure that everything’s efficient.”

A spokesperson for Suncorp, which owns Aami, GIO and other insurance brands, said the company appreciated Afca’s independent oversight.

“We understand that flood events are deeply distressing for homeowners, and we appreciate the independent oversight provided by AFCA,” they said in a statement.

“Our priority is to resolve concerns as early as possible, and we’re continuing to invest across the organisation to support our customers.”