But the insurance and banking group has also highlighted the huge impact from the climate, specifically the La Nina weather event. Its natural hazard costs rose to more than $1 billion and the Suncorp managing director Steve Johnston said it was a “challenging” issue.

The result in its cash earnings was a 42 per cent improvement on 2020 and it was driven by “the best insurance top-line performance in almost a decade”. A final dividend of 40 cents a share would be paid, bringing the full year payout to 66 cents, plus the special dividend of eights cents a share.

The company will also carry out a buyback of up to $250 million.

Shares in the company jumped 6 per cent when the market opened this morning.

Johnston said the impact from the pandemic had been neutral because reduced motor claims had offset additional provisions to cover business interruption claims. The banking division also experienced six consecutive months of home loan growth in the second half which resulted in a $1.1 billion turnaround in home lending growth between the first and second halves.

Banking profit was up 69 per cent to $419 million, helped by an impairment release of $49 million and improvement in its net interest margin.

The banking division also saw a high level of loan repayments, increased property sales and elevated refinancing. Credit quality remained strong, but there was an increase in “past-due” loans which it said related to typical seasonality and some COVID deferrals moving into hardship.

However, Suncorp said the outlook was uncertain and said a vaccination was the only way out of the pandemic restrictions. The company said  it was “strongly advocating for all Suncorp people to become vaccinated as soon as they can”.

Chair Christin McLoughlin said the most material issues for the company was building the community’s resilience to natural hazards, managing the impacts of climate change, managing data privacy and security and supporting an “evolving workforce”.

“Our most material issue … is the rising incidence of natural disasters,” McLoughlin said.

“In the past year we saw floods, hail, cyclones and bushfires across all corners of Australia and New Zealand.”

The year brought 23 separate weather events, around 50,000 claims and more than $1 billion in costs.

Johnston told analysts that the outlook for business and the economy was more positive