First-ever cross-sector coalition unites to tackle Australia’s home insurance crisis

Published on April 30, 2026

For the first time, insurers, actuaries, banks, community legal centres, academics and consumer advocates have united behind a single blueprint to improve home insurance affordability
The Housing Resilience Action Plan 2030 outlines more than 50 concrete actions, a clear timeline and a direct call on the Federal Government to act within six months

Sydney, 30 April 2026 — For the first time, solutions from across government, insurance, banking, investment, academia and the community sector have been brought together in a single plan to tackle Australia's growing home insurance affordability crisis.

The Housing Resilience Action Plan 2030, developed and led by Financial Counselling Victoria, Financial Rights Legal Centre, Monash University, Finity, the Resilient Building Council and ARC Justice, calls on the Federal Government to convene a forum to strike a National Housing Resilience Accord within six months to coordinate action across sectors.

A crisis already underway

Home insurance affordability in Australia is deteriorating rapidly as climate risks intensify and construction costs rise. The Actuaries Institute's home insurance affordability index shows the proportion of households facing unaffordable insurance climbed from 10% in 2022 to 15% in 2024, equivalent to 1.6 million homes. APRA estimates that around one in seven Australian houses is currently uninsured, a figure that could rise to one in four by 2050.

The impacts are most severe in regional and rural communities, particularly in lower-income areas and older “legacy homes” built before modern climate risks were understood. In some cases, households face recovery periods of up to a decade without insurance, compared to six to twelve months for insured households.

A system-wide problem requires system-wide solutions

The report argues the crisis is not driven by individual household decisions, rather by the way the insurance, banking, housing and government systems currently interact. Improved data-sharing, more consistent pricing signals and practical pathways for investing in resilience would enable households to respond more effectively as risks increase.

The central proposal is the establishment of a National Risk and Resilience Rating System (NRRRS), a common set of standards enabling risk and resilience to be consistently measured, priced and recognised across the insurance, finance and building sectors. Built on the established methodology of the Resilient Building Council, the NRRRS is designed for rapid national rollout.

Sharanjit Paddam, Principal at Finity, said, “Australia has spent years identifying this problem. This Action Plan is about fixing it. No insurer, bank or government can turn this around in isolation. The system is highly interconnected, so when everyone moves in the same direction behind a shared framework, reducing risk and restoring affordable insurance becomes achievable. A National Housing Resilience Accord, convened by the Federal Government this year, is the critical first step.”

Julia Davis, Senior Policy and Communications Officer at Financial Rights Legal Centre, said, “Right now, insurance premiums are going up, but they are not signalling anything useful to customers, they are not incentivising action. Customers are frustrated and are not given any useful information on what they can do. Households need relevant and appropriate risk and resilience information that they can act on and have that reflected in their insurance premiums. This Action Plan will empower Australians to make their homes safer and ensure their financial security into the future”.

Kate Cotter, Founder and CEO at the Resilient Building Council, said, “RBC has spent over a decade building Resilience Ratings — a system households are using and insurers are recognising. The Action Plan released today scales it nationally. With government support, every Australian household could have a free assessment by next summer, making homes safer, insurance affordable, and the economy more resilient. The plan is laid out, backed by consumer advocates, industry and experts. Every season we wait, households pay the price."

The Action Plan

The Action Plan sets out more than 50 recommended actions across one, three and five-year timeframes. Priority near-term actions include:

Agreeing on an interim methodology for standardised, property-level risk data
Funding a voluntary national rollout of the NRRRS, including free home resilience assessments
Requiring insurers to recognise verified resilience improvements in pricing
Funding training for independent, place-based consumer advice services
Including NRRRS within the Australian Green Taxonomy to unlock private capital

The report also recommends expanded Community Disaster Adaptation Plans in high-risk areas and strengthening the Disaster Ready Fund to support proactive resilience investment.

The opportunity for coordinated action

The coalition behind this report has mapped the problem, built cross-sector consensus and developed a clear, sequenced plan for implementation. The group is now calling on the Federal Government to convene a National Housing Resilience Accord in the next six months, with the NRRRS as the centrepiece for agreement and action support for this Action Plan.

Evidence shows that coordinated investment in resilience delivers significantly stronger returns than repeated disaster recovery spending, with benefit-to-cost ratios of up to 10:1.

The Federal Government is well-positioned to convene stakeholders, align incentives and unlock private capital to support resilience investment at scale.

About the Housing Resilience Action Plan 2030

The Housing Resilience Action Plan 2030 was developed by Monash University, Financial Rights Legal Centre, Financial Counselling Victoria, the Resilient Building Council, Finity and ARC Justice, following a workshop of approximately 50 experts from government, insurance, banking, investment, academia and the community sector held in December 2025.