About
Insurance Explained is a public information initiative developed by Associate Professor Fei Huang at UNSW Sydney. It aims to improve public understanding of insurance pricing, risks and affordability through accessible data, published evidence and clear explanations.
Insurance costs have become a major part of the cost-of-living debate in Australia. Useful information is published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, APRA, ASIC, the ACCC, the Reserve Bank, the Actuaries Institute and others. Each serves a different purpose, and their measures are easy to misread when combined.
The site covers the insurance most households buy for their home and car. These are home building, home contents and motor vehicle insurance, including compulsory third party (CTP) insurance. It does not cover health or life insurance. What types of insurance do households buy? explains the main types.
Insurance Explained brings these sources into one place and explains what each one measures. It helps answer four questions:
Fei Huang is Associate Professor of Risk and Actuarial Studies at UNSW Business School, UNSW Sydney. Her research covers insurance pricing, responsible AI, algorithmic fairness, and the fairness and resilience of insurance markets under technological and climate change. She co-founded and co-leads the AI4Insurance Lab, which works on responsible AI for insurance with industry and government.
| Source | What it provides | Used on | Updated |
|---|---|---|---|
| ABS Consumer Price Index | Insurance and all-groups price indexes, monthly and quarterly | Home, Trends, Key figures, Explainers | Monthly |
| ABS CPI weights | Insurance’s share of the CPI basket | Key figures, Explainers | Annually |
| ASIC Report 838 (2026) | Car insurance premium growth, renewals and payment costs | Explainers | One-off |
| ACCC insurance monitoring reports: 2025 and 2026 final report | Home insurance premiums by region, the cyclone pool, a consumer affordability survey | Explainers | Concluded June 2026 |
| Actuaries Institute, Home Insurance Affordability and Home Loans at Risk (2024) | Home insurance affordability stress estimates | Home, Key figures, Explainers | As published |
| ACCC Northern Australia Insurance Inquiry, final report (2020) | Address-level risk pricing and premium increases | Why premiums change, Explainers | One-off |
| APRA Insurance Climate Vulnerability Assessment (2026) | Uninsured households and projected weather losses | Explainers | One-off |
| Insurance Council of Australia (2023) | Insured losses from the 2022 floods | Why premiums change, Explainers | One-off |
| ARPC, the cyclone pool | How the cyclone reinsurance pool works | Explainers | As published |
| CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology, State of the Climate 2024 | Climate observations | Explainers | Every two years |
| The Australia Institute, Betting the house (2025) | Non-insurance and underinsurance estimates | Explainers | One-off |
ABS data are used under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Figures from other organisations are cited and linked.
Content on this site, including charts and downloadable data, is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. You may reuse it with attribution to Insurance Explained and the original data source.
Huang, F. (2026). Insurance Explained. UNSW Sydney. https://insurance.feihuang.org
When citing a figure, please also name the original source shown beside it, such as the ABS.
If you find an error, please get in touch. Corrections are made promptly and noted on the page concerned.
Fei Huang
Email: feihuang@unsw.edu.au
Website: www.feihuang.org