Home insurers are routinely failing to meet their own industry code obligations on renewal notices, and in some cases quoting existing customers more than a new policyholder would pay for identical cover on the same property.
Those are the central findings of Signal Failures: What are insurers telling us with their pricing, published on September 29 by CHOICE and the Financial Rights Legal Centre (FRLC). The report draws on an analysis of 52 home insurance renewal notices submitted by policyholders across Australia.
Clause 50 of the General Insurance Code of Practice – published by the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) and last updated in October 2023 – applies to home building, home contents, and motor vehicle policies sold directly by insurers. For those products, it requires insurers to include in their renewal notice a comparison between this year and last year’s premium, and to explain how the premium is calculated.
CHOICE and FRLC argue the clause requires more than a line of generic text. Based on their analysis of 52 renewal notices, the industry is not meeting even the basic threshold.
Not one notice provided what the organisations considered an adequate explanation for the premium increase. Three in four gave no explanation at all. The remaining quarter offered generic language that made no reference to the specific property or policyholder’s circumstances. Not one explained how policyholders could reduce their risk or lower their premium. Close to 10% made no reference to the prior year’s premium at all, and 92% did not include it on the first page.
The average increase across the sample was 16%, with a significant number between 25% and 50%, and some reaching 100%.
A companion CHOICE survey of 831 home insurance policyholders found 71% did not understand why their premium had risen, and 73% considered the increase unfair.
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The report’s sharpest case involves a policyholder named Rachel, whose property sits in a one-in-100-year flood zone.
Her renewal notice arrived for $8,576. When she ran a new business quote using the same address, cover level, excess and risk profile, the figure came back approximately $500 lower. The customer service representative she spoke to could not account for the difference.
Rachel had already tried shopping the market, only to find other insurers declined to quote for the property at all. “I feel I am trapped by this insurer, and that they can charge me whatever they want, knowing that no-one else will insure me,” she said.
That situation – a client stranded with no alternatives, a premium she cannot verify or challenge, and a renewal notice that explains nothing – is precisely where a broker’s ability to access markets and interpret risk makes a concrete difference to the client's outcome.
CHOICE also examined its home insurance reviews database, identifying 20 addresses where quotes from different insurers were especially wide-ranging.
In McGrath’s Hill, NSW, the lowest quote for one address was $1,940 and the highest $36,650 – a ratio of close to 20 to one. In Penrith, Sydney, quotes for the same property ranged from $47,117 to $108,238. In Garbutt, near Townsville, they ran from $2,591 to $33,103.
Spreads of that scale point to fundamentally different assumptions being applied to the same risk. Knowing which insurer’s model best reflects a client’s actual exposure is increasingly part of what a broker brings to the table.
This sits inside a wider pattern of deteriorating disclosure standards. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) August 2026 review of motor insurance renewal notices, Report 838, found not one insurer reviewed had explained the factors behind premium changes in quote or renewal documents. ASIC commissioner Alan Kirkland stated plainly: “Consumers should not have to guess why premiums have changed.”
ASIC has active Federal Court proceedings against one Queensland insurer over allegations it sent more than 570,000 renewal documents containing misleading premium comparison information over more than five years, per the ASIC media release issued in September 2025.
The General Insurance Code Governance Committee (GICGC) recorded 70,325 code breaches in 2024-25, up 20.5% on the prior year, with claims-related failures accounting for 59% of the total.
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According to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s (APRA) March 2026 Insurance Climate Vulnerability Assessment (CVA), home insurance premiums rose at an annual average of 7.2% between 2010 and 2025, against wage growth of 3.1%. APRA estimates around one in seven Australian households is currently uninsured – a figure that could reach one in four by 2050.
A CHOICE survey from March 2026 found only 17% of respondents trust their insurance provider, the lowest reading in 11 years.
“Insurers know more about the risks facing our homes than anyone else, yet consumers are routinely given a premium increase without any meaningful explanation of what's driving it,” said FRLC principal of external relations and advocacy Julia Davis.
CHOICE and FRLC are calling on the federal government to amend insurance legislation to require specific disclosure of what is driving premium changes, and to give policyholders information they can act on to reduce their costs.
Davis put it directly: “We are not calling for exhaustive explanations, rather the provision of enough information for a consumer to understand the factors that led to the price they are paying and how these factors may have changed at renewal.”
