Agricultural technology is advancing faster than many farm insurance products have kept pace with and Allianz Australia says its redesigned farm pack is a direct response to that gap. "There's a change in the types of technology that farms are using and so this is making sure our covers were able to address those changing needs and equipment," said Julie Mitchell (pictured), chief general manager of commercial and personal injury at Allianz Australia.
The list of newly addressed exposures is specific. Drone liability cover has increased from a 2 kilogram to a 25 kilogram threshold, reflecting the shift from small consumer drones to heavier commercial units now used for spraying, mustering and crop monitoring. That shift is already well underway nationally: the Department of Infrastructure estimates around 10% of agricultural businesses in Australia currently use drones to support operations, a figure forecast to climb substantially over the next decade. Electric vehicle charging infrastructure, like wall chargers and cables, is added to the accessories definition. Thermal runaway battery risk, a known EV-specific hazard, is now explicitly addressed under motor vehicle cover.
Autonomous vehicles receive their own specific treatment in the revised product. "Autonomous vehicles are explicitly addressed in the policy, with an exclusion when operating in fully autonomous mode without driver intervention," Mitchell said. This distinction matters as more Australian farms trial autonomous tractors and machinery without a driver physically present. For brokers, that exclusion is a critical point to flag to clients experimenting with autonomous equipment: Cover may depend on whether a human remains actively in the loop during operation, not simply on whether the vehicle is present on an insured property. Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) data shows the agricultural sector employed around 255,500 people in 2025, under 2% of the national workforce, a shrinking share against the scale of land under management that is itself a driver of the shift toward autonomous and drone-based operations.
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Allianz frames the technology changes as running alongside, not separate from, rising climate risk. Climate change is now the fourth-highest risk concern among Australian businesses surveyed for the 2026 Allianz Risk Barometer, up from sixth place in 2025 and seventh in 2024 - a trend Mitchell pointed to directly as informing the farm pack redesign. The updated product now prices sustainability and resilience measures into premium calculations, rewarding steps such as installing gutter guards. It also adds drought cover for livestock alongside additional cost-to-continue cover following an insured loss.
For brokers, the combined effect is a product trying to catch up on two fronts simultaneously: physical climate exposure and rapidly evolving on-farm technology. Both are moving targets and Allianz's own caveat is worth passing on directly to larger clients - this remains a packaged product and large corporate farming operations with significant processing, logistics or export exposure will still need tailored commercial underwriting rather than a packaged solution. For the broader hobby-to-mid-size farming client base the product targets, though, the technology updates close gaps that would otherwise have left increasingly common equipment, including drones, EV infrastructure, autonomous machinery, sitting outside standard cover entirely.
