General insurers in Australia are being asked to disrupt domestic violence by changing their products to prevent financial abuse.
Rebecca Glenn, CEO of the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety, says its second Designed to Disrupt discussion paper proposes a framework for general insurers to make it harder for clients to misuse products and services as a tactic of coercive control of their partners.
She says the centre is seeing abusers use a range of tactics to manipulate insurance products to cause harm, including vehicle, home and contents, and personal insurance products.
“For example, perpetrators of abuse change or cancel joint policies without the knowledge of their partner, or former partner, or redirect the payment of claims to accounts that partners do not know about or cannot access.”
She notes that in many cases, insurance policy terms and conditions prevent the payment of claims for damage caused by a policy holder.
“In instances where an abuser deliberately damages an asset covered by a joint policy, a victim-survivor may have an insurance claim denied. These actions may leave victim-survivors, usually women, in very difficult financial circumstances, with damaged assets and no recourse through insurance.”
Glenn says there are simple steps insurers can take to assist victim-survivors of financial abuse and to prevent it from occurring in the first place.
The report makes 19 recommendations that aim to spark discussions with general insurers in Australia, plus government, regulators and consumer advocates. It calls for:
- All general insurers to close loopholes that enable perpetrators to cancel insurance policies without the knowledge or consent of victim-survivors
- The general insurance industry to include a ‘conduct of others’ clause as a standard, enabling victim-survivors to make a claim when perpetrators deliberately damage property
- The Australian government to modernise the General Insurance Act so products can be redesigned with features that protect against financial abuse