Insurance premium pricing overtook claims handling as the main focus of policy work at the Financial Rights Legal Centre last financial year. The centre’s annual report also shows that uninsured people were among the most frequent callers seeking insurance help.
The Sydney-based centre runs the national Insurance Law Service. It recorded 4,165 insurance contacts in 2025-26, about one in six of the 25,681 calls and chats it answered across all its services. It handled 155 insurance tasks, such as lodging complaints for clients, and opened 28 insurance legal cases.
Comprehensive motor and home building cover were the two insurance products callers most often asked about. Next came callers with no cover at all: “uninsured” ranked third, followed by uninsured motorists. Home contents was fifth. The centre’s online motor vehicle accident tool, which helps people deal with crash claims, drew more than 11,500 users over the year.
Of the 780 policy activities the centre recorded, pricing transparency in general insurance was the largest single category, ahead of First Nations issues and general insurance claims handling. Life insurance came fourth.
“General insurance premium pricing is largely opaque and hidden from view,” the report said.
That work fed into Signal Failures, published with CHOICE in September. The report found most home insurance renewal notices it reviewed gave no explanation for premium rises. The annual report includes a case from that work. An insurer raised a client’s contents premium from about $700 to more than $5,000 in a year, citing flood risk, although she lived on the first floor of an inner-Sydney apartment block. She was told she would need to commission a hydrologist’s report at her own expense to challenge the rise.
The centre also pointed to two policy wins in general insurance. The government has funded work to legislate standard definitions for natural hazard terms over the next two years, and to develop options for clearer home and contents premium information.
Strata commissions and broker fees were among the centre’s top five media issues for the year. The centre has supported proposals to restrict commission payments in strata insurance. Brokers’ industry body, NIBA, has backed parts of the NSW review but opposed the recommendation to restrict commission-based pay for brokers working in strata. It argues that brokers already operate under Commonwealth licensing and the Insurance Brokers Code of Practice.
The report also notes that the government has committed to consulting on extending the new unfair trading practices laws to financial services. That would bring insurers and intermediaries within a regime that can force businesses to refund customers, fix problems or face penalties.
In life insurance, the centre said 62 of the 85 recommendations in the final independent review of the Life Insurance Code of Practice reflected its submissions. It also welcomed legislation banning life insurers from using adverse genetic test results.
Casework secured $127,097 in insurance claim payments for clients, along with $37,012 in ex gratia payments and $14,886 in refunded premiums. The Insurance Law Service received $1.6 million in Commonwealth funding, the largest single source of the centre’s income.
For brokers, the report shows where consumer advocates will focus next. Advocates are moving from claims disputes towards pricing, including how premiums are explained and how intermediaries are paid. Brokers who can already explain a client’s renewal in plain terms, and show what they are paid for placing it, will be in a stronger position whichever way the reforms land.
