Insurance products are being weaponised by domestic violence perpetrators to control and financially abuse their partners, a report has found.
These abusers can use insurance policies and procedures to steal, limit or withhold payouts, cancel policies, and interfere with the claims progress, a report released by the Centre for Women's Economic Safety (CWES) said.
This leaves victim-survivors to deal with damaged property and assets, and without the funds to fix them.
One woman who spoke to CWES' lived experience panel said her husband had cancelled their joint home insurance policy and pocketed the refund before threatening to burn down their house with her inside it.
"If he had carried out his threat ... I would have been liable for the mortgage on a house that we can't live in and lost all our possessions with no way to replace them," she said.
About 90 per cent of people who seek support for domestic and family violence have been affected by economic abuse, the report said, with one in six women and one in 13 men having been subject to this form of coercive control since the age of 15.
In the short term, financial abuse can impact victim-survivor's safety and autonomy, and in the long-term it can damage credit scores, grow their debt and hurt employment prospects.
As a result, report author and UNSW adjunct associated professor Catherine Fitzpatrick has called for insurers to redesign products and protect women from financial abuse.
“If the law can contemplate foreseeable risks like floods, it could reasonably include the risk of domestic and financial abuse," she said.
Some general insurers have taken some steps towards supporting victim-survivors.
The industry's code, for example, recommends referring customers to specialist family violence services and providing easy access to relevant support systems.
Meanwhile, Suncorp's home and contents insurance provides flexibility in cases where abusers intentionally damage property to inflict financial or personal harm.
However, there is a lack of consistency.
"Some victim-survivors will receive support that is empathetic and trauma-informed, with flexibility that enables solutions tailored to their individual needs," Ms Fitzpatrick said.
"Others continue to struggle with dismissive or judgmental staff, risks to their safety or compounding financial hardship."
The report wants all insurers to go further and close loopholes that allow perpetrators to cancel insurance policies without the knowledge of others, adopt a "conduct of others" clause similar to that used at Suncorp, treat joint insurance policies as composite when a couple separates and more.
The industry should also improve and standardise data collection to record cases of insurance abuse, and governments should modernise laws to define domestic, family violence and financial abuse.
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