Insurance Council of Australia looks to work with Albanese govt on cyber policy settings

In a statement this week, the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) congratulated the incoming Albanese government renewing calls for an overhaul of cyber policy settings.

In March the ICA said in its paper, Cyber Insurance: Protecting our way of life in a digital world, that “unprecedented growth in digitisation and connectivity has led to increased cyber risk”, particularly coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, which ranges from data breaches by employees to criminal gangs targeting business systems.

ICA argued that cyber insurance – which provides support to businesses in these matter – is not yet well-known by the industry, which along with increasing loss ratios and reduced risk appetite requires an overhaul of the government’s current policy settings, including making minimum security requirements and third-party certifications for software and hardware mandatory.

“The Insurance Council also looks forward to working with the Albanese Government on improving the resilience of Australia’s digital environment, including to ensure policy settings for a vibrant and sustainable cyber insurance market which is so vital to protecting Australian businesses from the impacts of cyber crime,” the ICA said in the statement released this week.

The ICA also backed Labor’s commitment to better improve the resilience of communities through a $200-million Disaster Ready Fund, which aligned with the body’s own policy which called for a range of measures to better protect households and communities from the impacts of extreme weather.

“The ICA has worked in a bipartisan manner with both sides of politics for many years on issues of importance to insurance customers and the sector, with a particular focus in recent years and months on community and household resilience,” ICA CEO Andrew Hall said.

“We warmly welcomed Labor’s Disaster Ready Fund which, if supported financially by the states and territories, will make a real difference to protecting those homes and communities exposed to extreme weather risk.”

Neil Griffiths

Neil is the Deputy Editor of the wealth titles, including ifa and InvestorDaily.

Neil is also the host of the ifa show podcast.