A “loyalty tax” occurs when discounts are offered to new customers while longer-term customers pay more. Often this involves increasing premiums at the first and subsequent renewals. As the NSW government’s Insurance Monitor, charged with making sure insurance companies do not charge unreasonably high prices or mislead policy holders, I have had my office research the prevalence of loyalty t... read more>

While there’s no shortage of commentary on the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landing, I think it’s appropriate a club sharing this magic number should have its say too. In the same way looking up a 50-metre ladder seems further than looking down one the same distance, so too is the difficultly of imagining a world in 2069, compared to the less daunting task of picturing life in 1969 – a... read more>

From July 1 there’s a major change in insurance – last year’s premium for home and contents, and for cars, must be displayed on premium renewal notices. Using my powers under NSW legislation, and after a battle lasting several years, I have required this. Seeing the writing on the wall, all insurers and major brands have implemented this charge nationally, affecting almost 10 million hou... read more>

If there’s one important area we can be guilty of overlooking, even avoiding, more than our superannuation and that’s life insurance.  And when that life cover is included within your super it’s easy to naively assume both the payouts will be sufficient and premiums good value. With luck and judgement that might be the case but the costs of life cover are going up, we are all getting ... read more>

Would you open and read a letter if it could save you or your loved ones in the event of a serious accident or worse? I like to think I’d bother, even if it came from my super fund, but most don’t agree as figures around a massive alert being sent out about changes to life insurance have shown. Australian Super sent out notifications to 220,000 members affected by the July 1 changes w... read more>