The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has opened public consultation on the Insurance Council of Australia’s (ICA) proposed General Insurance Code of Practice. Its decision on approving the Code will turn partly on the feedback it receives.
The ICA lodged the redrafted Code with ASIC on October 22. It is the first time the industry body has sought ASIC approval for the Code, which dates back to 1994. Submissions close on December 23. ASIC will also hold targeted consultation with key stakeholders.
ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland said stakeholder feedback would inform the regulator’s assessment against its approval criteria. Those criteria are set out in Regulatory Guide 183. They include whether Code obligations can be enforced against subscribers, whether compliance monitoring is effective, and whether the Code sets standards that go beyond or clarify existing law.
Approval would not make ASIC responsible for enforcing or monitoring compliance with the Code, which remains owned by the ICA. The ICA can also amend the Code after further talks with ASIC before submitting a final version.
The headline change is that Code obligations would become contractually enforceable through insurers’ contracts with customers. This would give policyholders a route to court for breaches, alongside AFCA and the Code Governance Committee. The redraft also changes claims handling, support for customers experiencing vulnerability, family violence protections and standards for expert reports.
Kirkland set the bar for approval at the ICA’s annual conference in October 2025.
“Simple cannot be code for stripped out,” he said.
Consumer advocates have argued the redraft falls short of that test. In their submissions to the ICA’s consultation, they said that several commitments had been softened, including a shift from “immediately” to “promptly” for correcting claims handling mistakes. They also said that regular complaint updates had been removed from the primary obligation. The Australian Consumers Insurance Lobby has since raised concerns about expert independence in the lodged version.
For brokers, the main issue is which products the Code covers. The June draft replaced the current wholesale definition, which keeps all commercial covers within the Code by default, with a closed list of eight cover types. Business interruption, public and product liability, professional indemnity, management liability, cyber and industrial special risks were excluded.
The National Insurance Brokers Association said this would leave small businesses facing PI or cyber claims without the Code’s investigation standards, complaints and hardship protections, or oversight from the Code Governance Committee. The consumer lobby raised the same gap.
The published material does not make clear whether the version lodged with ASIC keeps that definition unchanged. ASIC’s consultation page carries the proposed Code and the ICA’s response to submissions. Brokers with small business clients will want to check the definition before the consultation closes.
ASIC’s process does not set a deadline for a decision. The ICA has previously said it expects a 24-month transition period once the Code is approved. That means contractual enforceability is unlikely to apply to policies before 2028.
The consultation is the last formal opportunity for brokers to influence the Code before it becomes part of retail policy contracts. Brokers with commercial clients have the most at stake. Unless the wholesale definition has been widened, the PI, cyber and liability claims they help small businesses with would sit outside the Code just as it gains legal force.
