Publications

In this podcast, Jane Wilburn, senior solicitor from the Financial Rights Legal Centre, talks with Legal Aid NSW about your rights with respect to dealing with Debt Collection Agencies. What you should know and how we can help. Listen to the podcast.

This year the Financial Rights team was focused on our goal: to provide advice and advocacy for people in financial stress. Our strategy to focus on quality rather than quantity paid off again this year. We had less staff and provided less services overall, but achieved a record amount in monetary outcomes for clients of over five millions dollars. Of course it is not always the monetary value that is attached to the outcome that is the most important. Our clients report life-changing impacts like finally sleeping at night, improvements in their health and relationships, keeping a roof over their head, being able to save for the future, being able to care for their children more effectively, or having the mental space to look for work or engage in education. For some the assistance is life-saving.

Our previous report Open Insurance: The Consumer Data Right in Insurance identified some privacy issues that could potentially arise from the application of the Consumer Data Right to insurance. This report takes a closer look at these issues and sets out to identify current privacy practices of general insurers and the risks that are arise now – in order to set a benchmark upon which to examine any potential future concerns once consumer data became more easily available and portable. The result of this examination is the fourth and final report in our series looking at the future of insurance: Privacy Practices in General Insurance.

Australians who face devastating property losses following natural disasters such as floods, storms and bushfires confront further hardship when trying to claim on their insurance because of confusing terms and conditions and fine print limitations in their policies.

This report, Standardising General Insurance Definitions  commissioned by Financial Rights Legal Centre calls upon the Australian Government to simplify and standardise key insurance definitions used in home building and contents insurance and regulate the fine print used to exclude and qualify terms.

It examines the Product Disclosure Statements of the home insurance policies of 34 insurers in Australia. It also reports on a series of focus groups conducted to explore consumers’ understandings of these terms, and related concerns.

No matter what challenges are thrown at us, the team at Financial Rights Legal Centre remains focused on helping people in the toughest moments of their lives, many who face the risk of losing their home, have lost their job or confront pressures from Australia’s biggest businesses such as banks.

Financial Rights Legal Centre’s Automating General Insurance Disclosure examined close to 400 cases of Australians being denied their insurance claims for not fully disclosing their driving, insurance claims records or other relevant information. The report argues that governments should work with the general insurance sector to enable the pre-filling of Australians’ driving records and insurance claims history information required for disclosure purposes at the time of purchase of motor vehicle insurance.

Automating General Insurance Disclosure was produced with grant assistance from Ecstra to examine – from a consumer’s perspective – the future of insurance and the new concept of Open Insurance – the application of the Consumer Data Right to the insurance industry.