Insurance claims intermediaries operating in disaster-affected communities have been named as a new consumer protection priority for the first time in the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) Corporate Plan 2026-27, released August 26. The designation arrives as record catastrophe claim volumes, rising complaint figures, and escalating code breach data collectively point to sustained conduct pressure across the general insurance claims chain – from insurer to intermediary.
The regulatory focus reflects a claims environment that worsened markedly in 2025. Extreme weather generated $4.8 billion in insured losses across the year, up 727% on 2024, with more than $4.1 billion concentrated in Queensland alone, according to updated analysis from the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) released in April 2026. Insurers handled 294,000 claims from declared extreme weather events – almost six times the prior year – with average costs per claim rising 39% to $16,471. The Australian Financial Complaints Authority’s (AFCA) Significant Event Response Plan was activated three times in 2024-25, covering the North Queensland floods in February, Tropical Cyclone Alfred in March, and the Mid North Coast and Hunter floods in May, with delays in claims handling identified as the top issue across all three events.
The AFCA recorded 119,949 total complaints in 2025-26 – the highest on record and the third consecutive year above 100,000 – with general insurance accounting for 36,022, a 5% rise on the 34,231 recorded the prior year. Delay in claim handling, service quality, and claim rejection were the top three issues across all financial products. The complaint data does not capture the full conduct picture. The General Insurance Code Governance Committee (GICGC) recorded 70,325 code breaches in 2024-25 – a 20.5% increase on the prior year – with claims-related failures comprising 59% of that total, or 41,140 breaches. The obligation to provide policyholders with a progress update at least every 20 business days was breached 18,350 times, up 67% year-on-year.
Against that backdrop, AFCA published its finalised Approach to General Insurance Claims Handling on August 10, 2026. The Approach sets out AFCA’s position on claim delays, cash settlements, and claim denials involving expert evidence and establishes that where AFCA finds a failure to handle a claim properly, remedies can include financial losses caused by poor claims handling – including losses incurred beyond a policy limit – as well as non-financial loss compensation capped at $6,300 per claim. The document provides brokers with a documented benchmark for identifying when insurer conduct falls short of AFCA’s stated expectations when advocating on behalf of clients whose claims are delayed or disputed. AFCA chief ombudsman and CEO David Locke has been direct about where the responsibility falls: “Proactive and clear communication with customers can often be the very thing that stops a complaint from being escalated in the first place.”
ICA CEO Andrew Hall acknowledged the scale of the challenge when the ICA opened public consultation on its redrafted General Insurance Code of Practice in June 2026. “The world has changed and the Code needs to keep pace with those changes; customers face more frequent extreme weather, more complex claims, and new technology that is reshaping every part of the insurance process,” Hall said. The draft Code, pending ASIC approval, introduces legal enforceability of key insurer commitments for the first time, automatic acceptance of home and motor claims unresolved after 12 months, and a new Extra Care framework for vulnerable customers.
The corporate plan does not arrive in isolation. In November 2025, ASIC announced claims and complaint handling failures by insurers as a formal enforcement priority for 2026, alongside misleading pricing practices, poor private credit practices, and financial reporting misconduct. The 2026-27 corporate plan extends that scrutiny explicitly to intermediaries operating in post-disaster communities – a step beyond the insurer-level focus that preceded it. In 2025-26, ASIC secured a record $830 million in court-ordered civil penalties and $644 million in consumer remediation payments, with 32 new civil proceedings filed, 18 new criminal prosecutions commenced, and 25 criminal convictions recorded.
ASIC chair Sarah Court framed the plan’s intent as a deliberate separation between those complying with the law and those causing harm. “That means reducing unnecessary friction for those trying to comply, while making it harder for those causing harm to avoid scrutiny and accountability,” she said. ASIC’s consumer protection work will focus on areas where harm can spread quickly or have lasting consequences, including scams, debt collection, insurance claims intermediaries in disaster-affected communities, buy now pay later, and superannuation advice fee deductions.
General insurance broker complaints to AFCA rose to 788 in 2024-25, up from 447 the prior year, representing approximately 0.8% of total complaints. That share remains low by system-wide standards but has nearly doubled year-on-year and now sits within a regulatory environment that explicitly names intermediary conduct in disaster settings as a supervisory priority. For brokers managing clients in catastrophe-affected regions, the practical implications run to documented client communication throughout the claims cycle, timely lodgement of claims, and proactive advocacy when insurer conduct does not meet the benchmarks now published by AFCA.
ASIC will also lift its focus on artificial intelligence, including how banks use AI in customer-facing services, how AI may affect consumers and investors, and how AI-driven manipulation, deepfakes, and misinformation could affect market integrity. For intermediaries deploying AI tools in client communication or claims triage, the implication is that technology use will be assessed for whether it weakens, rather than strengthens, consumer outcomes.
The plan also commits ASIC to reducing unnecessary regulatory burden through simpler guidance and instruments, better digital services, more efficient licensing processes, and closer coordination with other regulators on data collection. “This plan is about confidence – confidence that financial harm will be addressed, confidence the rules are clear and proportionate, and confidence misconduct will have consequences,” Court said.
