The Royal Commission

Detailed information about the Royal Commission is available on its website.

General insurance at the Royal Commission

The sixth round of the Royal Commission's public hearings, being held from 10 - 21 September, will consider issues associated with the sale and design of life insurance and general insurance products, the handling of claims under life insurance and general insurance policies, and the administration of life insurance by superannuation trustees. The hearings will also consider the appropriateness of the current regulatory regime for the insurance industry.

On 27 August the Royal Commission announced that it plans to consider case studies from four general insurance companies, including IAG.

IAG's response to the Royal Commission 

Our purpose – to make your world a safer place – is guiding our response to the Royal Commission. We are taking a constructive and transparent approach to achieve outcomes that help our customers and communities feel safer, stronger and more confident.

We are committed to working together to ensure that we act and make decisions that demonstrate we care about our customers and our people; we are proud of IAG and our service to customers, our reputation and our people; we stand up for what is right; and are driven by a desire to improve consumer outcomes.

We regard the Royal Commission as an opportunity for us to listen, to learn and to be open to making any changes necessary to ensure we continue to meet customer and community expectations. 

Already, the Commission has highlighted differences between community expectations and business practices. We regard this community expectations lens as crucially important and it has provided us with an added incentive to move faster to make some changes we already had underway – for example, reviewing and redesigning our products through the lens of our customer-inspired product design principles, and withdrawing products or from partnerships where good customer outcomes could not be assured.

As confronting as the revelations from the Royal Commission have been, we are confident the financial services sector will emerge stronger, and better able to win and maintain customers’ trust.

Swann add on insurance

While we expect general insurance to be examined in week two of the Royal Commission’s Round 6 hearings, the Commission has already flagged that it will consider the subject of add on insurance.

IAG’s Swann Insurance business used to sell add on insurance. It has since undertaken a review of its add on insurance policies and agreed to offer a full or partial refund of policy premiums where customers may have paid for more cover than they needed.

More information about Swann’s add on insurance refund program is available on its website.