Fair-minded cover: Investigation into discrimination in the travel insurance industry – Jun 2019

The Commission’s report, Fair-minded cover: Investigation into discrimination in the travel insurance industry, details the findings of our Investigation, which looked at the compliance of several Australian travel insurers over an eight-month period.

The Investigation focused on three companies that made up around 37 per cent of Australia’s travel insurance industry – Allianz & AGA, Suncorp and World Nomads Group.

The Investigation found that, in an eight-month period, these travel insurers sold more than 365,000 policies containing terms that discriminated against people with mental health conditions.

These insurers were unable to establish that they could rely on any of the available exceptions under the Equal Opportunity Act to lawfully discriminate.

We are pleased to report that, during the investigation, all three insurers committed to changing their practice of issuing travel insurance policies with a blanket mental health exclusion. This means that some of the largest travel insurers in the Australian market will now provide some cover for mental health conditions.

The report also considered important steps insurers can take to comply with the law in future.

Read more about the Investigation into discrimination in the travel insurance industry, where you can also watch the video explainer.