Insurance trends
Official price data for insurance in Australia, compared with overall inflation and other household costs. All figures come from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Insurance prices, annual change
+5.4%
Year to September 2026. All-groups CPI: +4.3%
ABS-published monthly figure.
Insurance prices, monthly change
+0.1%
September 2026 on the previous month
Calculated from ABS monthly index numbers.
Over five years
+47.0%
All-groups CPI: +24.6%
September quarter 2021 to September quarter 2026. Calculated from quarterly index numbers.
Over ten years
+69.9%
All-groups CPI: +36.4%
September quarter 2016 to September quarter 2026. Calculated from quarterly index numbers.
Source: ABS, Consumer Price Index, Australia (Data API, dataflow CPI). Original series, Australia. Retrieved 3 November 2026.
Insurance compared with the all-groups CPI. The wider insurance and financial services group, which also includes deposit and loan fees and other financial services, can be added for comparison.
trendRows = freq === "quarterly" ? quarterly.filter(d => d.role === "main") : monthly
trendLatest = d3.max(trendRows, d => d.date)
trendStart = {
const s = new Date(trendLatest);
s.setUTCFullYear(s.getUTCFullYear() - years);
return s;
}
seriesShown = picked.length ? picked : ["Insurance"]
trendData = prepare(trendRows, {measure, start: trendStart, series: seriesShown})
trendChart(Plot, d3, trendData, {measure, freq, width, series: seriesShown})md`${freq === "monthly"
? "The ABS began publishing a complete monthly CPI in November 2025. Monthly index numbers in the ABS Data API start in April 2024, and ABS-published annual changes start in April 2025."
: "Quarterly figures are averages of the three monthly index numbers. Annual and quarterly changes are calculated from index numbers and may differ from ABS-published figures by 0.1 percentage points because of rounding."}`Price change for comparable insurance policies. The ABS prices home and motor vehicle insurance each month using web-scraped price quotes for a range of customer profiles, so the index tracks price, not total spending. The category covers comprehensive insurance for dwellings, home contents and motor vehicles, and compulsory third party insurance.
What households pay in total, which also moves with sums insured, coverage choices and risk. It does not show separate figures for home and car insurance, because the ABS does not publish them below this level. It also does not show why prices changed.
Price change for selected household spending categories over the same period.
How insurance price growth compares with other living costs. Vehicle repair and new dwelling prices are included because repair and rebuilding costs feed into insurance claims.
How much those costs contributed to insurance price rises. Some categories, such as electricity and child care, are also affected by government rebates and subsidies.
Source: ABS, Consumer Price Index, Australia (Data API, dataflow CPI). Original series, Australia. Changes calculated from quarterly index numbers. Food is a CPI group. The other categories are expenditure classes. Retrieved 3 November 2026.
The figures behind the charts, for quoting and checking.
latestTable = {
const five = new Map(changeOver(quarterly, 5).map(d => [d.series, d.v]));
const ten = new Map(changeOver(quarterly, 10).map(d => [d.series, d.v]));
const order = Object.keys(labels);
const latest = order.map(s => {
const rows = quarterly.filter(d => d.series === s);
return rows.length ? rows.reduce((a, b) => (a.date > b.date ? a : b)) : null;
}).filter(Boolean);
return html`<div class="table-scroll"><table class="data-table">
<thead><tr><th scope="col">Series</th><th scope="col">Latest quarter</th><th scope="col">Annual change (quarter)</th><th scope="col">5-year change</th><th scope="col">10-year change</th></tr></thead>
<tbody>${latest.map(d => html`<tr class=${d.series === "Insurance" ? "hl" : ""}>
<th scope="row">${labels[d.series]}</th><td>${periodName(d.period)}</td>
<td>${fmt(d.annual_change)}</td><td>${fmt(five.get(d.series))}</td><td>${fmt(ten.get(d.series))}</td></tr>`)}
</tbody></table></div>`;
}Annual change compares the latest quarter with the same quarter a year earlier. It can differ from the monthly headline figure (5.4% for insurance in the year to September 2026), which compares single months.
Source: ABS, Consumer Price Index, Australia (Data API, dataflow CPI). Original series, Australia. Changes calculated from quarterly index numbers. Retrieved 3 November 2026. Download: quarterly data (CSV) · monthly data (CSV). ABS data are licensed under CC BY 4.0.
The CPI insurance expenditure class covers comprehensive insurance for dwellings, home contents and motor vehicles, and compulsory third party motor vehicle insurance. Health insurance is not included. The ABS classifies it in the Health group, under Medical and hospital services.1
“Insurance” is an expenditure class, the lowest level at which the ABS publishes price indexes. “Insurance and financial services” is a broader CPI group that adds deposit and loan fees and other financial services. The two measure different things.
The insurance index rose by about 30% in the year to June 2000. The ABS attributed this mainly to the GST. Under the method used then, the CPI valued insurance as the net service households receive, roughly premiums less claims. Taxes on premiums are a larger share of that smaller base, so the GST moved the index by more than it moved the premiums households paid.2
Since November 2025 the ABS has published a complete monthly CPI. The quarterly CPI is the average of the three months in each quarter. This page uses ABS-published monthly annual changes for the headline figure and quarterly index numbers for long-run history.
ABS, Consumer Price Index: Concepts, Sources and Methods, 2025, paragraphs 6.33 and 8.126.↩︎
ABS, Treatment of Insurance Services in the Australian Consumer Price Index, Australian Economic Indicators, October 2000.↩︎