“We are on 100 acres and completely surrounded by scrub. When we inherited this house it was all good, but it wasn’t remotely ember-proof,” he says. 

Over the last five years, Sean estimates he has spent $150,000 on improvements to the property to make it more fire resilient, including a new roof, new cladding, windows and fire screens. Despite lowering the risk of losing his house in a fire, his insurance premium hasn’t been reduced at all. 

“Our decision-making hasn’t been about reducing the premiums, but still, it would be nice to get some kind of financial recognition,” Sean says.��

For Sean and thousands of other Australians around the country who live in high-risk disaster areas, the decision to make resilience improvements to their properties is a cost they mostly have to bear without assistance. Even when they do make improvements on their own, those efforts are very rarely, if ever, factored into their home insurance premiums, which have continued to rise nationally.��

Changing how mitigation efforts are priced and factored into premiums is a simple change that advocates say could help incentivise more owners to act, potentially saving homes and saving customers and insurance companies money when disaster does strike.��

Current insurance premium pricing a “wicked problem”

Julia Davis, principal of external relations and advocacy at Financial Rights Legal Centre, says the insurance industry currently has no standard approach when it comes to pricing individual mitigation efforts.��

“Pricing systems currently are complex and they are opaque, there is little transparency and a homeowner has no idea exactly why they are priced the way they are,” she says.��

“A lot of people out there want to make their homes safer. If the insurance industry said ‘you can do X, Y and Z and this is the discount you will receive’ as well as creating an incentive, it would also be a clear signal to people about what they should do,” Davis says. 

Professor Paula Jarzabkowski from the University of Queensland is an expert on insurance markets. She says insurance premium pricing is a “wicked problem” and acknowledges that more transparency and information for customers is needed. But she disagrees that pricing individual mitigation efforts would necessarily work for insurance companies.��

“Mitigation on an individual level isn’t a simple solution. If you don’t get community-wide results, you might not actually be lowering the risk (for insurers),” she says.

How to incentivise mitigation

The government’s Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation provides a financial guarantee for cyclone insurance in certain geographic areas of northern Australia. The reinsurance pool also provides four individual mitigation actions households can take to receive a discount on their insurance premium. 

Davis says this model is an example of how incentivising mitigation can work. 

“We know much more about what relatively easy mitigation efforts are effective when it comes to cyclones, so it is easier to price them. Flood and fire become a more complicated picture, but that’s not to say it can’t be done,” Davis says.��

The Resilient Building Council (RBC), which was formed in the wake of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, is an innovative example of how a new approach could work.��

RBC CEO and founder Kate Cotter has spent over a decade convincing industry to take into account fire mitigation efforts. She’s also developed a bushfire resilience app to help homeowners know how to improve their protection and save money.��

“It is happening, there is momentum building in this space, even if it is a little slower than we would like,” she says. 

They have had some success. Both Suncorp and IAG have said customers who make certain improvements through the Bushfire Resilience Rating Home Self-Assessment App will receive discounts of up to 60% on the disaster peril component of their home insurance premiums.��

Government intervention needed

Cotter says that for innovations like the app to scale up and have an impact nationally, government assistance and intervention will be necessary.��

“Governments certainly have a role in helping support these programs in terms of scaling them up and backing them over the long term, but they’ve also got a really important coordination role in bringing industry and all the stakeholders together to accelerate these programs,” she says. 

“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel. We see with rooftop solar that when you incentivise something, people will invest.”��

Davis says that government intervention in this issue is needed and history shows the industry won’t fix this problem on their own. 

“We’re seeing growing levels of underinsurance from both an affordability and an accessibility point of view. Our entire financial system is reliant on home insurance working, and it isn’t working for too many people right now,” she says.��

The Insurance Council of Australia declined to be interviewed, but said in a statement that insurers use “a range of sophisticated data sources” to determine premiums. 

“Individual property characteristics, including risk-reducing upgrades, can be factored into a premium, so homeowners who have made mitigation improvements should tell their insurer,” a spokesperson says. 

“While individual mitigation efforts can make a difference, the answer is to tackle the risk itself. The most effective lever for reducing premiums at scale is investment in large-scale hard infrastructure, including levees, flood barriers and resilient community assets that reduce risk for entire neighbourhoods at once”.����

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You’re not alone. According to recent research by ����Vlog, trust in general insurers (covering products like home and car insurance) is at an all-time low.

����Vlog Consumer Pulse is a quarterly study of over 1000 consumers’ attitudes. The March 2026 survey found that the level of trust in general insurers is lower now, at only 17%, than any time since the survey began 11 years ago.

Meg Dalling, assistant director of policy and campaigns at Consumer Action Law Centre (CALC), says this data is not surprising.

“What we are hearing on the frontlines at CALC and from regulators is that insurers are not fulfilling promises they are making in their product terms, particularly around claims handling,” she says.

“It’s certainly not getting any better.”

The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has received over 34,000 complaints about general insurance companies in 2024–25, nearly double that of five years ago.

Misleading product or service information, followed by delays in claim handling were the most common issues AFCA heard.

Similarly, the General Insurance Code of Conduct Governance Committee (GICGC), who oversees the voluntary industry code, found that unacceptable wait times and communication issues were the most common breach of standards in 2024–25.

In that year, the GICGC reported over 70,000 breaches by insurers, impacting over 99,000 consumers.

Delays and long waits a major problem

A spokesperson from the Insurance Council of Australia, the peak industry body, attributes the distrust to affordability issues.

They say though GICGC’s findings show there is more to do, “many breaches related to minor, time-bound requirements, such as updating a customer within a specified timeframe, rather than substantive failures,” they say.

However, chair of the GICGC Veronique Ingram says these delays can have a real impact on customers already dealing with stressful or uncertain circumstances.

“Delays in updates or decisions can add to that stress and make it harder for people to recover or move on,” Ingram says.

Melanie Domaschenz, manager of South Shepparton Community Centre in northern Victoria saw how long wait times for claims worsened damage for victims of the 2022 floods.

“Some of them weren’t assessed for six weeks. In that time the moisture absorbed into the plaster, the wood. They had mould,” she says.

Domaschenz says she works with many people from low-income households who couldn’t afford temporary accommodation. “A lot of people were literally living in a sleeping bag in their shed,” she says.

In addition to exacerbating financial hardship, Domaschenz says long wait times and poor communication take a toll on residents’ mental health, some giving up insurance altogether to avoid the stress of dealing with companies again.

“Some people didn’t get their insurance for nearly two years. That’s a lot of trauma for a person to go through.”

Decision-making and resourcing also an issue

The latest data from the GICGC also found that when customers escalated their complaints, the insurance companies themselves determined that they had initially made the wrong decision in nearly two thirds of cases.
��
In 2024–25, this amounted to over 1,200,00 complaints (62%) where the customer only got the positive outcome they were entitled to after raising a complaint.
��
Dalling says this raises concerns about the quality and fairness of the original decisions made by insurers and is “just the tip of the iceberg”, as only a small fraction of people take their complaint further.

With Australia set to experience more climate-driven disasters, pressures on the insurance industry are growing. The 2023 ����Vlog report Weathering the Storm found that opaque and confusing policies left many underinsured, and companies need to be more transparent to people facing the threat of more extreme weather.
��
Delays experienced by customers also suggest resourcing issues. Melanie Domaschenz says at the time of the 2022 floods in Shepparton, many assessors had to fly down from Queensland where communities were experiencing similar disasters, with many companies often using the same few assessors.
��

What can be done?

Following a parliamentary inquiry on the 2022 floods, the industry has committed to strengthening the its voluntary code of conduct to better serve consumers under a changing climate. This is yet to materialise.

“Nearly two years on,” Dalling says, “we still don’t have a stronger code to hang our hat on.”

The Insurance Council of Australia says they are working in close consultation with consumer advocates to redraft the code, making sure obligations are clear, enforceable and in plain language consumers can actually understand.

In the meantime, Dalling says the high rates of complaints and breaches show that insurers are failing to meet the obligations that already exist.

Dalling says the GICGC should be doing more by way of issuing sanctions and naming and shaming, as the names of companies breaching their obligations are currently not published. She says the government financial regulator, who issues licenses to insurers, also has a responsibility to ensure the industry operates in the public interest.

“Insurance is a private market that serves a really important public function. It acts as a shock absorber when the worst happens.”

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In our home and contents review we use a national price rating to assess value for money. But in this article, we break down prices state-by-state, so you can find the the cheapest home insurance in your location.��

We then use this information combined with our expert analysis of what each policy covers to reveal the best value insurance policies across the country.

On this page:

• How much does home and contents insurance cost?
• Cheapest insurers by state
• How to choose the right home insurance policy
• Best value home and contents insurance by state

How much does home and contents insurance cost?

The cost of home insurance is continuing to rise at a rapid rate, putting more unwelcome financial pressure on households.

We crunched the numbers to see how much Australians are paying for home and contents insurance across the country.

Cheapest insurers by state

We recommend regularly reviewing your insurance policy to make sure you’re only covered for what you need, and that you’re getting the best price for your cover.

We found the cheapest insurance products in each state so you can check whether they’re right for you.

These policies don’t necessarily provide the best cover, however, so make sure you read the product disclosure statement (PDS) and learn more about the cover details of these policies in our home and contents comparison before making the switch. We used the same method to calculate Price scores that we use in our comparison, but limited the quotes by state. We looked at over 40 products, with the number of quotes per product ranging from up to 36 in ACT to over 1500 in Queensland.����

We reveal the best value policies (as opposed to simply the cheapest) further down, exclusively for ����Vlog members. If you’d like to make sure you’re getting the best value for your dollar, sign up or log in below.

How to choose the right home insurance policy

If you want real value for money in insurance, you also need to look at what’s covered by each policy. To do this yourself, you’ll need to go through the policy documents for each product and compare the points of coverage that are important to you. Or you could use our Cover score, which is calculated by our insurance experts and is available to ����Vlog members.

We look at how insurers cover over 500 different things, and allocate points for everything, from whether the policy includes an under-insurance safety net and flood cover, to how much they’ll pay for food spoilage during a blackout, or furniture damaged when moving house.

We then convert this to a percentage so you can easily compare the level of cover between one policy and another.

Best value home and contents insurance by state

We have used our Cover score with state-based prices to reveal the policies that offer the best bang for your buck in your state. Log in to unlock this members-only content, or join ����Vlog to get instant access to all of our expert, independent reviews.

Becoming a ����Vlog member also gives you access to a massive library of product and service reviews and comparisons based on our rigorous independent lab testing and expert knowledge so you can choose products and services with confidence.

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Supermarkets are competing with each other for more than just your grocery spend.

While Coles and Woolworths have been offering insurance products for years, Aldi debuted its insurance products more recently, giving its customers the opportunity to pick up their home and contents insurance, landlord insurance and car insurance along with their weekly shop. 

But is it a good idea to buy your insurance from the same place you get your milk and bread? 

There are certainly lots of incentives that the big supermarkets spruik to get your business. Coles and Woolies offer a range of insurance policies linked to their respective loyalty programs, Everyday Rewards and Flybuys, which give you bonus points when you sign up, and ongoing discounts on your shopping that can increase according to how many policies you hold.

Of course, in order to take advantage of these discounts, you hand over a significant amount of personal data to the supermarkets, something ����Vlog experts warn you should be wary of. 

Aldi doesn’t have a loyalty program and doesn’t offer conditional discounts – their insurance products were launched promising “everyday competitive prices for Australian shoppers”.

With many Australians struggling with the increasing cost of living, a discount on groceries is undoubtedly a huge incentive. But ����Vlog experts advise that while price is a key concern for many when shopping for a new insurance policy, you should also be considering the finer details of a policy and understand what you actually will, or won’t, be covered for.

Short-term savings on your groceries are great, but insufficient insurance coverage or tricky caps or exclusions could leave you substantially out of pocket if you ever need to make a claim.

How can supermarkets offer insurance products? 

The general insurance industry in Australia is worth almost $100 billion, so it’s unsurprising that the major supermarkets want to get a slice of that pie.

However, supermarkets are obviously not financial service providers, insurance companies or experts, so they essentially act as an insurance promoter, leveraging their brand and their existing customers to sell another company’s insurance which they then collect commission for.

Coles home insurance products are provided by Auto & General (which sells insurance under the more familiar Budget Direct brand) while Hollard issues home insurance for Woolworths’ Everyday Insurance brand. Aldi insurance is underwritten by RACQ Insurance through an agreement with Honey Insurance. 

How do the Coles, Woolworths and Aldi home insurance policies stack up?

����Vlog experts have compared over 100 home insurance policies across the market to help you find the one that best suits your needs and budget.

Unlike other insurance comparison websites, we’re completely independent and don’t get paid by any of the insurers we’re comparing. That means we’re also willing to call out the policies that we don’t recommend because they don’t offer good value or have weird exclusions.

����Vlog insurance expert, Daniel Graham has closely scrutinised each of the home insurance policies offered by Coles, Woolworths and Aldi.

“These are all fairly standard policies – what stands out about them is that none of them are unique,” he says.

“Aldi is the king of copycat snacks and when it comes to insurance products, all three supermarkets have simply repackaged someone else’s existing policy and slapped their logo on it.

“When you look at what the supermarkets are putting forward as their point of difference you get the sense they’re struggling to stand out in a market where unique selling points are mostly buried deep in the detail. 

“Remember, almost all home insurance policies cover you for the same dozen or so insured events, so it’s in sub-limits and exclusions that a product can shine – or not. For the most part, these policies do not.

“That’s why it’s important to look at the detailed Product Disclosure Statement of the policy you’re buying,” he says.

Just like with groceries, shopping around for your insurance can land you some pretty significant insurance savings. And just like supermarkets, there isn’t as much variety out there as you might think.

If you think any of these policies give you the cover you need, it’s worth getting quotes from other brands with similar or identical policies to see if you can get it cheaper (without the need to commit to shopping at one supermarket forevermore to gain your loyalty points or get your discount).

And of course, use������Vlog’s home insurance��comparison to see how the supermarket brands stack up against the rest.

Coles, Woolworths and Aldi home insurance policies compared

Aldi Household Insurance

• Cover score: 57%
• Price score: 78%
• Sum insured policy underwritten by RACQ

Aldi’s big hook is the 8% discount they offer to home insurance customers for putting web-connected monitoring devices in their homes, to detect things like leaks and doors left open.

This is not actually an Aldi special, but instead comes straight from Honey Insurance, which administers their policies. The discount, along with the insurance policy itself, is also available through other brands including Honey and BOQ.

While many aspects of the Aldi policy are standard, there are a few points of difference ����Vlog experts have noted: 

• the optional accidental damage cover doesn’t include the outside of the building or the whole list of general contents
• offers up to $1500 for stolen credit/ATM card fraud (per card)
• offers storm surge cover which is a rare inclusion, but could be valuable for coastal properties��
• above average limits for food spoilage (up to $1000)
• no overseas cover for portable contents (except New Zealand)
• no cover for vet bills. Vet bills are not covered by any of the supermarket home insurance policies but are covered by other policies in our comparison. 
• this policy offers slightly better value than average in terms of price. It is by no means a bargain, but it outperforms both the Woolies policies.

Find more about the features of the Aldi policy and how it compares.

Aldi’s contents-only policies

The policies we are looking at in this article combine coverage for both home and contents (for home owners), however you can also buy contents-only policies if you’re a renter or strata owner, for example.

It is worth noting Aldi is now performing extremely well on price in our contents-only insurance comparison. View our contents-only insurance comparison.

Coles Home Insurance

• Cover score: 61%
• Sum insured policy with optional 25% building safety net
• Underwritten by A&G

As we highlighted earlier, for both the Coles and Woolworths policies, the unique selling point isn’t actually in the insurance product: it’s in the fact that you get discounts on your shopping or additional points in exchange for handing over your personal data to their respective loyalty programs.

Remember there are many other policies that offer the same cover or better out there, so it’s still important to shop around to make sure you’re getting the best deal. 

The Coles policy is the only supermarket policy with an optional 25% building safety net, offering you coverage if you find yourself underinsured if you have to repair or rebuild your home.

A few other notable points in the fine print: 

• optional accidental damage covers some commonly excluded events like scorch marks on benchtops and damage caused by pets
• no coverage for gardens and landscaping, which is an unusual exclusion
• good cover for the emergency storage of undamaged contents (if you can’t live in your home due to damage from an insured event)
• international cover for portable contents
• temporary accommodation cover includes $250 to cover emergency groceries
• very good cover for contents in the open air (i.e. if you leave your possessions outside and they get damaged or stolen), however there is a cap at $1000 for theft. Exclusions apply.
• no cover for vet bills. Vet bills are not covered by any of the supermarket home insurance policies but are covered by other policies in our comparison.  

Find out more about the features of the Coles Home Insurance policy and how it compares.

Everyday Home Insurance (Woolworths)

Standard

• Cover score: 48%
• Price score: 56%
• Sum insured policy underwritten by Hollard

Comprehensive

• Cover score: 55%
• Price score 48%
• Sum insured policy underwritten by Hollard

Woolworths offers two tiers of its home insurance product at different price points. As we have pricing data available for each of these policies, we’re able to compare how they stack up on both features and price, and it’s not great news.

Daniel says: “The Everyday Insurance Standard policy received a Price score of 57% – the higher the score, the cheaper the policy usually is compared to other products. There are many policies in our review that outperform both of these on both cost and level of cover.”

“And there are identical products offered by providers such as Real Insurance and Australian Seniors, so it’s worth shopping around to ensure you’re getting the best deal.”

A few details to note in these policies:

• no safety net for either if you find yourself underinsured
• accidental damage, such as to carpets, furniture, kitchen appliances, TVs etc, comes standard with the Comprehensive policy
• good cover in both policies for emergency storage of undamaged contents
• cover for contents when moving to a new home not covered by Standard policy
• no cover for vet bills in either policy. Vet bills are not covered by any of the supermarket home insurance policies but are covered by other policies in our comparison.  

Find out more about the features of the Everyday Insurance policies and how they compare.

Brands that offer similar home insurance products

If you think any of these supermarket policies give you the cover you need, it’s worth getting quotes from other brands with similar or identical policies to see if you can get it cheaper (and without having to join a supermarket loyalty program).

Everyday Insurance from Woolworths: Compare with Real Insurance, Australian Seniors.

Coles*: Compare with Budget Direct, Virgin Money, ING, Qantas.

Aldi: Compare with Honey, BOQ, Bank Australia.

* Coles has a $250 benefit for groceries built into their temporary accommodation benefit, which the other brands do not. In all other ways the cover is identical.

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Unfortunately, home and contents insurance is not one of those things you can simply strike from your household budget – it’s wise to ensure your assets are covered in the event of minor or major disasters. 

But it’s also wise to ensure you’re getting the best deal. 

And as you’re forking out hundreds or thousands of dollars each year for cover in the case of things like fire, flood or theft, it’s vital you have a good-value policy you can rely on, and not one that’s over-priced, lacks basic features or has sneaky exclusions. 

The home and contents insurance policies to avoid

����Vlog experts have compared more than 100 home insurance policies across the market to help you find the one that best suits your needs and budget. We score each policy by balancing the cost with the features it offers, including cover limits and exclusions.

Unlike other insurance comparison websites, we’re completely independent and don’t get paid by any of the insurers we’re comparing. 

That means we’re also willing to call out the policies that we don’t recommend because they don’t offer good value or have weird exclusions. 

We don’t want you to end up with a dud policy, so here are the products that were amongst the lowest scoring in our review, and which ����Vlog experts say you should be wary of.

����Vlog insurance expert Daniel Graham says: “In our latest comparison, we’ve found 12 different insurance products that are particularly bad, scoring 53% or less, which we recommend consumers avoid. Two are extremely expensive and don’t give you good value, while the other 10 all share a lot of poor cover features in common (they’re also all from the same underwriter, Hollard).” 

These include policies offered by Woolworths Everyday Insurance, Bupa, Huddle, AHM, GIO, RAA and Real Insurance. 

Daniel says that many Australians don’t realise that while insurance policies may be branded differently or sold by different providers, such as your favourite supermarket, your bank or health insurer, they are often essentially “white-label” products backed by the same underwriter, so there are often policies with identical cover being sold at different prices.

“This means it’s really important to compare a policy before you buy,” says Daniel. “Check what you’re covered for and how the policy measures up, who the underwriter is, and whether you can get better value for money by switching to a different brand or provider.”

“We consider a huge breadth of features in our comparison and give each policy a score based on the features it offers and what it costs. At the bottom of the list we have some low-scoring barebones policies that charge more than they should for some of the lowest coverage levels in the market.”

Consider becoming a ����Vlog member to see the best performers.

Ten similar, low-scoring policies 

The first ten policies listed above are all underwritten by Hollard. They all offer budget coverage without the budget price tag. These are: 

• AHM (Basic and Comprehensive) 
• Bupa (Basic and Comprehensive) 
• Everyday Insurance (Standard and Comprehensive) 
• Huddle (Basic and Comprehensive) 
• Real Insurance (Essential and Top) 

Despite the different names, the Comprehensive policies (called “Top” by Real Insurance) are quite similar to the basic policies. They come with accidental damage cover and some higher sublimits, but there’s otherwise not much to differentiate the two cover levels.

The accidental damage cover actually gets an excellent score, but the gains there are offset by the higher price for the comprehensive cover.

Some bad points ����Vlog experts noted about all of these policies include: 

• No underinsurance safety net, which is a feature that provides a buffer of extra coverage beyond your nominated sum insured if the cost to rebuild or replace your property after a total loss is higher than expected. This usually adds a percentage (e.g. 10% to 30%) to your sum insured for a total loss. 
• No cover for animal damage. For example, if a wild bird flies into your home and gets trapped, causing damage to a window or contents while trying to escape. Most insurers treat this as a distinct insured event. 
• “New for old” cover excludes clothing, computers more than four years old, household linen, items out of use/stored away and shoes (they do however say they will cover the reasonable market value for these items based on age and condition).

There is poor cover across other features as well, illustrating the importance of paying close attention to a policy’s PDS (product disclosure statement) before you commit.

Read the full reviews for each of these policies in our home and contents insurance review.

The mid-level policy that is just too expensive: RAA Home and Contents

����Vlog experts say that if you have the RAA Home and Contents policy (underwritten by Allianz), you’re paying too much for what is essentially average cover. It has a 10% underinsurance safety net for building and contents cover, which is a plus, but it’s still lower than that offered by other insurers.��

In terms of cover, RAA is in the middle of the pack. One upside is that they don’t have long lists of cover exclusions or restrictions, but when they do apply a sublimit it tends to be on the low side. This would be acceptable if it weren’t for the price, which is too high for cover of this quality. 

Other downsides include no cover for any plants in the ground including lawns, trees, plants, shrubs or hedges, and low cover for contents you have outdoors in the open air. It also offers low cover for temporary accommodation, which you might need if your home is damaged or uninhabitable by an insured event. 

You should also beware of taking cash settlements with this insurer, as ����Vlog experts say you could find yourself out of pocket. 

A cash settlement is when the insurer gives you money to carry out the repairs or organise replacement contents yourself, rather than letting the insurer organise the works. 

If repairs or replacements are available, and you agree to a cash settlement instead, the amount offered will be what it costs RAA to fix the damage – but not necessarily what it will cost you to fix it yourself. Because of the deals insurers have with their networks of repairers, the prices available to them are often lower than market prices. 

RAA doesn’t want to pay full price for a cash settlement, so they reserve the right to offer the lowest price possible, even if this isn’t a price you’d be able to access yourself.

Read the full��RAA Home and Contents policy��review.

The policy that offers better cover, but for a premium price: GIO Platinum 

There is one policy in our list of low-scorers that looks very good on paper but has been priced out of contention. 

GIO Platinum offers top performing cover, receiving a cover score of 74% which is amongst the best in our comparison. However, it was the single worst performer on price, meaning you’ll find better value elsewhere. 

Daniel says: “This policy is significantly more expensive than comparable “premium cover” policies, even a near-identical product from the same underwriter. We compared GIO’s quotes against its competitors at nearly 2300 addresses, and this policy was the most expensive in a quarter of scenarios.

“No matter which insurer you are currently with, if you haven’t switched for a while, you’re likely missing out on savings. 

“If you’re willing to put in the effort you could theoretically change your insurer every year or so to take advantage of discounts available to new customers. But this only pays off if you make sure you’re switching to a good-value policy every time.”

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In 2022, over 2000 people in the region were forced into temporary housing.

For Bob* and Evelyn*, an elderly couple from one of these small communities, the anxiety lingered long after the water level went down.

“The flood, you deal with it,” Evelyn says. “But the insurance, it stays with you.”

Living on a fixed income, they say the cost of keeping insurance has become a growing source of stress. They asked us not to use their real names for fear of losing their insurance.

Despite Bob and Evelyn’s premiums rising $600 within a year and having to live in a caravan while repairing their property, they consider themselves some of the lucky ones.

Community law centre ARC Justice consulted over 100 people in the regional towns of Shepparton and Mooroopna, releasing a report that found that 40% of respondents were uninsured or didn’t have full flood cover, due to the policy being too expensive or not offered at all.

The centre’s CEO Damian Stock says many community members were left with no choice but to go without flood cover, a situation defined as “underinsurance”.��

Insurance is becoming a luxury

Stock says while insurance is generally understood to be a “community-wide shock absorber”, people are being priced out of the private market and have to bear the risk of natural disasters on their own.

“Do I go without food for three days a month to have insurance? Insurance is becoming a luxury,” one resident told ARC Justice.

The research found that many locals’ premiums have double or tripled when they came up for renewal most recently, with one resident saying theirs increased from $2000 to $28,000 overnight, despite not making a claim.

Melanie Domaschenz, manager of South Shepparton Community Centre, says people on low incomes or government payments are hit especially hard.

“We have people still living in flood-affected homes, people who’ve been sleeping on pallets on their floor because they can’t afford to fix their home without insurance.”

While many have no choice but to stay in homes with flood damage, affected residents are enduring more than just poor living conditions. Domaschenz says many have suffered “immense psychological trauma” because of the floods and the ongoing battle with financial costs.

“They’ve lost everything. Their ability to be resilient and keep on fighting, they can only do that for so long when they’re living in a constant state of emergency.”

Lack of transparency

With the compounding problems of rising interest rates, the increased cost of living and soaring insurance premiums, Domaschenz says the community centre’s food relief program is supporting a new cohort of people who have never needed help before.

“There’s a lot of people who are left with $10 a week for all their living expenses.”

The impact of rising insurance rates goes beyond flood-affected households. Stock says many of the residents of the towns included in the survey are concerned about the lack of transparency in how their premiums are being set.

He says that even those whose properties were not impacted by flooding saw a rise in premiums due to the postcode they live in, while others who invested in making their home more resilient were still hit with a price increase.

“We spoke to an elderly household who spent $120,000 raising their home by a metre, and then said it wasn’t reflected in their premium.”

National issue

When it comes to unaffordable insurance, residents of the Shepparton area aren’t alone. According to the Insurance Council of Australia, 77% of properties across the country facing the highest levels of flood risk are not insured.

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the insurance regulator, estimates that due to an increase in climate-driven disasters, around one in four homes may be uninsured by 2050 due to unaffordable premiums or lack of access.

Stock says there is growing community desire for government support to make homes more disaster-resilient, and for this to be properly reflected in insurance prices.  

Research participants also called for greater transparency when buying into flood-prone areas so people can make informed decisions about where to live.

Considering the increasing threat of events like floods and fires, Stock says some residents think the government should consider nationalising insurance, so that residents in high-risk areas are not priced out. 

“Why is this area of risk left to the private market where other areas of risk are considered a public necessity?”

*Names changed

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Some home and contents policies we review exclude all cover for animal damage. While this may seem strict, at least you know where you stand. We take a closer look at the fine print of the 86 home policies that provide at least some cover for animal damage to figure out what they will and won’t cover.

Does home insurance cover animal damage?

Most home insurance policies typically cover sudden and accidental damage caused by animals. But not if the damage is caused by your own pets or common pests. So they generally won’t cover items ruined by Spot or Mittens, but what they actually will cover varies from policy to policy and is often full of exclusions.

What animal damage does home insurance cover?

Sudden damage

For damage to be covered by home insurance, it needs to be sudden and immediate – they won’t cover damage that happens gradually over time. For example, if a possum crashes through your roof overnight or a kangaroo breaks a fence, the repairs are typically covered because the event is unexpected and immediate.

However, insurers exclude gradual or preventable damage, such as long-term infestations of termites, or repeated damage from animals that occurs over weeks or months. The key distinction is whether the damage was a one-off incident caused by an “event” versus something that developed slowly and could have been prevented with maintenance.

Trapped animals

Almost one-fifth of policies with animal damage cover in our comparison specify that they will cover damage caused by an animal that has become accidentally trapped inside the house, including birds. QBE though, will only pay for damage to living areas, and will not cover damage to an enclosed crawl space, the outside of buildings, your roof cavity or contents in the open air.��

Insurers that offer cover for accidentally trapped animals including birds:

• AAMI
• Apia
• GIO
• QBE
• RAC
• RACT
• Suncorp
• Sure
• Youi

What animal damage does home insurance not cover?

Pets

Insurers usually make a distinction between animals you own, or allow to be there, and those you don’t. Some insurers refer to animals “kept at the premises” or animals you permit to be there, but they essentially mean the same thing – pets owned by you or your guests. And generally, if the animal is allowed there, damage they cause isn’t covered.

So that means that damage that your own pet causes is not covered. But also, if your friend brings their dog over during your coffee catch up, any damage it causes won’t be covered either.

A few policies will cover some damage caused by pets under the Accidental Damage optional extra. But this comes at an extra cost, and with its own set of exclusions.

Insects and vermin

Insects and vermin are specifically mentioned in some kind of exclusion in 95% of the policies we compare that offer some level of animal damage cover.��

Two thirds of these policies exclude all damage caused by insects and vermin. Other policies exclude all damage they cause except for fire and liquid escape, while others exclude all insect-related damage but still cover fire damage caused by vermin.

It pays to read the fine print of your policy carefully; there are a few policies that state they will cover damage caused by these creatures, but not if it’s caused by chewing, clawing or eating. So actually they won’t cover the most likely damage.

The definitions of insects and vermin vary too. In some cases it means just insects and rats and mice, while other definitions include native wildlife such as possums, as well as bats, termites, lice, and other species. We’ve seen cases where possums are explicitly classified as vermin under some policies, while in others they’re explicitly excluded from the definition of vermin.

You’ll usually be able to find out exactly what is meant by these terms in the glossary or definitions section of your PDS – if you’re reading it online, use Ctrl+F to search the document. Don’t rely on AI, because it often gets the answer wrong (we’ve tried).

You also can’t count on your policy to cover structural damage from termite infestations. The “action of termites” is specifically excluded by over half of the policies we analyse, and the remaining policies exclude insect damage or damage from insects eating, or only cover such damage if it results in a fire.

Birds

There is a lot of variation in the cover offered for damage caused by birds. Some policies refer specifically to birds, but if yours doesn’t, you can assume they are included as “animals”.

Overall, 24 policies we review that provide cover for animal damage exclude any damage caused by a bird. A further 41 list specific exclusions for actions like chewing, scratching, or soiling; which rules out most of the ways in which a bird might cause damage. So even if you’re covered for animal damage, most policies are unlikely to cover any bird damage.��

Some policies will cover damage by birds if they’re accidentally trapped inside and some cover bird damage to door and window glass or birds colliding with the property only. RAA only covers damage from birds if it results in a fire.��

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1. Home insurance covers your pet’s accommodation if you can’t stay in your home

Overall, 95% of the home insurance policies we compared will pay to house your pets if your home is too damaged from an insured event to live in. Only AHM, Aldi, Bupa’s lower-tier policies, Huddle, Honey, RAA and RACQ restrict emergency accommodation to just the humans in your family.

A few insurers – Australian Seniors, Bupa, CBA, Everyday, Huddle and Real – specify that the offer of temporary accommodation is extended only to dogs and cats, while the rest use the term “pets”, with most mentioning that they’ll pay for commercial boarding facilities if your family needs temporary accommodation.

2. Home insurance will pay if your dog bites someone

If your dog injures someone, your home insurance could cover their medical bills – even if it happens when you’re away from home. Home insurance policies include cover for legal liability, so if you or a family member is deemed responsible for an accidental injury, as is usually the case when you’re responsible for a dog and they hurt someone, your home insurance could pay for things like legal fees, medical bills or compensation.

Some insurers limit this to just dogs, while others extend cover to dogs, cats and horses. Injuries or damage away from your property is covered by contents insurance, while injuries or damage on your property is covered by building insurance, and combined policies cover both.

3. Some home insurers cover vet bills

The following insurers will contribute to vet bills if your pet is injured in a road accident:

• Bank Australia
• Bank of Melbourne
• BankSA
• COTA
• Great Southern Bank
• Guild
• Guild
• HCF
• Hume Bank
• Kogan
• NAB
• National Seniors
• Over Fifty
• St.George
• TIO
• Westpac

And you can add cover for vet bills as an optional extra to policies from GIO, RAA, RACQ and Suncorp.

4. Home insurance will cover damage by uninvited pets

Other people’s pets that have not been invited onto your property are generally covered, so if they cause sudden accidental damage, you can make a claim for the cost of repairs – provided it’s not excluded by one of the other clauses in your policy.

5. Almost no home insurance policies will cover pet damage to your home

While you’re generally covered if an uninvited animal shows up at your house, if it’s your own pet doing the damage the news isn’t so good. Of the 98 policies we analyse, 97 policies specifically exclude all damage caused by pets in their standard version (the exception is Youi – it provides cover for fire caused by pets, but that’s it). This exclusion includes your guests’ pets, and pets you’re minding too. Basically, damage they cause won’t be covered if you’ve allowed the animal to be on your premises.��

You can pay for the accidental damage optional extra to get some cover for pet damage, but this comes at an extra cost, and with its own set of exclusions.

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If you’re planning an extended trip away from home, perhaps that long-awaited overseas adventure or a sabbatical to a holiday house, then checking your home insurance is something to add to your to-do list before you go. 

We take a look at what insurers mean by ‘extended leave’, what happens if you have a house-sitter or Airbnb guest, and what the risks are if you don’t tell your insurer you’re away.

Should I tell my insurer I’m going on an extended holiday? 

“Most definitely yes,” says ����Vlog home insurance expert Daniel Graham.

“Almost all insurance product disclosure statements (PDS) will include the requirement that you inform them if your home will be unoccupied, typically, for 60 or more days,” says Daniel.

“Insurers handle unoccupied homes in one of three ways: most will impose an additional excess on events that occur while your home isn’t occupied. Some will make you pay an extra premium instead, or they might only cover you for a limited set of weather events, instead of the full range of insured events covered by the policy.”

Most of the policies in our home and contents insurance comparison require you to tell your insurer if you’re away for 60 days or more, a few give you 90 days away without having to let them know, and some give you 100 days where you’re still covered by your regular policy.

“Your policy might have additional criteria that you need to meet, such as having someone check in on the property once a week, or having the lawns mown regularly,” says Daniel.

“Each insurer defines ‘unoccupied’ in their own way, so it’s important to read your policy documents to properly understand your cover.”

How long do insurers cover you to be away from home?

How does extended leave affect the conditions of your policy?

Companies that cover extended leave generally require customers to pay either a higher premium or a higher excess for that period. Depending on which company you’re with, you may also need to meet other requirements, such as having someone mow your lawn, collect your mail and regularly check on the house.

This won’t just apply to those heading overseas, so if you’re planning a long trip within Australia, you’re staying elsewhere while you renovate, receiving long-term medical care in a hospital or a rehab centre, or you’ve moved out while trying to sell or rent your property, make sure you check your insurance.

Can an insurer deny your claim during your extended leave?

According to Daniel, they can. But it also depends on your insurer. 

“If you haven’t informed your insurer and met your duty of disclosure responsibilities,” says Daniel, “they can either not cover you at all, or not cover you for certain events, such as theft or leaks, or they can charge you an additional excess on top of what you’re already paying.

“It comes down to a case-by-case basis.”

Why does it matter if there’s nobody at home?

An empty house isn’t just a bigger risk for insurance companies, but also for owners. Your home might be at increased risk of vandalism, theft, and damage from weather-related events such as storms, floods, cyclones, bushfires and blizzards.

A house that looks empty is tempting to thieves. According to data from the thieves look for signs that a house is unoccupied. These include:

• rubbish bins left out on the curb
• no lights turned on at night
• no cars in the driveway
• uncollected mail
• overgrown garden or lawn.

Aside from break-ins, another risk for an empty home is if something goes wrong. 

Damage from a leaking washing machine, burst pipe or severe weather might not be discovered for weeks or even months. This raises the risk of a small incident becoming something more serious while you’re away.

I rent – do I need to tell my landlord I’m going away?

As a renter, you’re not responsible for taking out insurance to protect the property. However, your lease may require you to inform your landlord if you’re going to be away from the property for an extended period of time. Either way, it’s a good idea to let your landlord know if you’re going on a long trip. 

If you have renter’s insurance, read through your PDS carefully and make sure you understand what effect your absence might have on your coverage. If in doubt, check with your insurer.

Is my home classed as ‘unoccupied’ if I have a house-sitter?

“Having a house-sitter will usually meet the criteria for occupancy,” Graham says. “It comes down to the way the insurer defines ‘occupied’ and often if someone is eating, sleeping and living in your home, then it’s occupied. If it’s only someone staying there one night every once in a while, this might not meet the requirements and your insurer might consider that an unoccupied home.”

Do Airbnb guests make my home ‘occupied’?  

It does, according to Graham, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be covered.

“Once you add in tenants it becomes a business situation,” he says. “Home insurers don’t want to take on the added risk of covering someone’s home business, and are increasingly writing exclusions for short-term letting into their policies.” 

If you’re planning to have Airbnb guests stay in your home for some or all of your extended holiday, you must discuss it with your insurance company, advises Graham.

“Not only do you need cover for your building and contents, but if you’re renting out your home you need cover for legal liability,” says Graham. “The last thing you want is to have paying guests injure themselves and damage your property, then find out your insurer won’t cover you for either.”

In November 2023, the urged homeowners planning to rent out their properties to ensure they had the right insurance in place.

“Standard home and contents insurance can exclude coverage for short-term rentals,” they said. They advised homeowners planning to rent out their properties to:

• check their building and contents insurance policy details prior to advertising on short-stay holiday rental platforms. If the policy doesn’t cover short-term rental look for a specialty policy that protects both home and contents while paying guests are staying 
• be aware that a rental platform’s host protection insurance may not cover all the types of damage that might potentially occur��
• reduce the risk of theft by removing valuables during the short-term stay 
• check strata rules, tenancy agreements and local council laws because these may prohibit short-stay holiday rental.

Most people don’t know whether they are covered

One of the challenges around extended leave and insurance is that most people are simply unaware it’s an issue.

Reading their PDS in detail can help you understand the terms that apply in this situation, but as Daniel says, PDS documents aren’t typically an easy read.

“We know that people very frequently don’t read their policy documents,” he says.” They’re often very long documents, they’re confusing, they’re written in complex legal language and people just don’t have the time to get their head around all the details.

“This is something that would really come up on an ad hoc basis, so it’s not something you’re likely to do often.”

As with most forms of insurance, the devil is in the detail. It’s worth taking the time to read through your policy or talking to your insurer about it, and about what you need to do to make sure your home and valuables remain covered.

Holiday checklist

• Read your policy carefully well before you leave. If anything is confusing or unclear, call your insurance company to talk it through.
• Give your insurance company your holiday dates as far in advance as possible.
• If your insurance company has any requirements (such as having someone collect your mail or mow the lawn), make arrangements with a friend, neighbour or professional service for the time you’ll be away. 
• Consider installing a security alarm or security camera.
• Consider turning off your water at the mains.
• Take basic details of your insurance with you on your holiday, such as your membership number and the name of your plan.
• Make sure you have all agreements with your insurer in writing.

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Opened up an email or letter from your home insurer recently to find an eye-watering increase to your annual premium? You’re not alone.

The rising cost of home insurance is increasing the financial pressure on Australian households. In fact, 80% of households are now worried about the cost of their home insurance. This is up from 75% in June 2024, and the highest level we’ve seen in our 10 years of tracking household budget concerns with our nationally representative Consumer Pulse surveys*.

Over the past year, quotes for new home and contents policies increased by 4.1%, or $153, on average. But which insurers have lumped their customers with the biggest price increases?

To assess how much prices have jumped in the last year, our experts compared thousands of quotes from 30 insurers collected in January 2025 to quotes collected for the same scenarios in January 2026. Then we calculated the average change for each brand.

����Vlog insurance expert Daniel Graham says: “The inflation spike that hit the economy after the COVID disruptions affected home insurance prices particularly hard. In 2024, we saw quotes for new business increase by 16% on average. The good news is that widespread price hikes have slowed down. The bad news is those high premiums are here to stay.”

*����Vlog Consumer Pulse June 2025 is an online survey of 1,008 Australian households that has been weighted to ensure it is representative of the Australian population based on the 2021 ABS Census data.

����Vlog tip: With a huge variety of policies out there that can vary in price by thousands of dollars, it’s important to ensure you’re getting the best deal possible on the coverage that suits you best. Compare home and contents policies.

The insurers with the biggest price increases

The insurers with the largest average price increases between January 2025 and January 2026 were:

• Kogan: 15.5%
• AHM: 13%
• Honey: 12.2%
• Apia: 11.2%

Kogan changed underwriters during 2025, meaning the quotes obtained in January 2026 are for a product with different conditions, exclusions and limits.

“Kogan took a policy that regularly ranked at the top of our comparison and swapped it for one that scores just average on cover,” Daniel says. “You might have expected the price to come down too, considering they also increased prices by 38% in 2024.”

Average price increases don’t tell the whole story

Daniel says that while insurers may boast low average price increases, this often doesn’t tell the whole story, as insurers don’t raise all their prices uniformly. 

“Insurers have many levers at their disposal to change the way their algorithm calculates your premium,” he says. “Sometimes this means an insurer will increase prices for some addresses, while keeping them the same or even dropping them for others.

“In 2025 insurers took a more targeted approach to their price changes. In 2024 almost all of the quotes we tracked changed, mostly upwards. This year insurers were less frantic. Only a third of the quotes we tracked went up, and half didn’t change at all.”

Although Kogan had the greatest average premium increase, the price hikes were limited to less than a quarter of the tracked addresses, with variations between states and territories.

“In NT, SA, northern Queensland and Tasmania the increases were well above that brand’s overall average,” says Daniel. “But in NSW and ACT they slashed prices for some new customers: more than a third of their quotes were lower, and barely any went up. Other insurers were doing a similar balancing act, but not to the same degree.” 

Daniel says this is a good reason to not write off an insurer you might previously have dismissed as too expensive. It’s possible they’ve changed their underwriting approach in a way that means it’s now cheaper to insure your home with them.

“We tracked quotes at 5,330 addresses around Australia,” he says. “For 40% of those homes, the cheapest quote in our dataset was actually lower in January 2026 than in 2025. So while premiums are going up in general, it’s possible to find competitive prices if you’re willing to shop around.”

The insurers with more reasonable price hikes

Even though CPI inflation was 3.5% in 2025, for insurance and financial services alone that figure is 2.5%. 

Here are the insurers whose prices went up by less than financial services inflation, on average:

• Bank of Melbourne, BankSA, St.George, Westpac: 2%
• Bupa: 1.9%
• RAA: 1.9%
• RACT: 1.6%
• TIO: 1%
• Everyday Insurance (Woolworths): 0.6%
• Guild: 0.3%

The insurers that dropped prices

Surprisingly, some insurers actually reduced their prices in 2025. They’re an odd mix: a major national insurer, a couple of small independents, and a supermarket:

• QBE: 2.1%
• Aldi: 5.7%
• Sure: 7.2%
• RAC: 8.9%

Daniel says: “Aldi is an interesting one. Even though their policy is a carbon copy of Honey’s, they spent 2025 getting as far as they could from each other on price. Everything about the policy is the same except for the logo. But Aldi is now about 25% cheaper than Honey.”

The biggest price cutter of 2025 was RAC, who reduced premiums at half the addresses we tracked, with quotes going down by 8.9% on average.

“This is quite the turnaround for the West Australian insurer,” says Daniel, who notes that in 2024 RAC actually had the second greatest average increase in our analysis (32.3%). “It’s good they’re walking back some of those price hikes, but it’s important to consider the big picture. Is this the start of a downward trend, or just a blip?”

The factors affecting price

����Vlog experts spend a lot of time analysing quotes and policies offered by various insurers, so we know there are many factors that influence the quote you get as a potential new customer.

These include where in Australia you are, the level of security you have, how much you’ve insured your property for and what excess amount you choose. 

It pays to shop around, because prices vary a lot from insurer to insurer. Instead of declining cover to high-risk properties they don’t want to insure, some insurers will offer ludicrously high quotes to see if you bite.

For nine addresses we looked at in January 2026, the most expensive quote was more than 20 times greater than the cheapest competitor’s. Read more about��how to get the best value home insurance.

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