Named. Sourced. Public.
Nothing on this page is our opinion. Every number below was published by a regulator — AFCA, APRA or ASIC — about a named insurer, and links to the publication it came from. We just put it where you can see it.
Sources: AFCA 2024–25 Annual Review · APRA Life Insurance Claims & Disputes Statistics, Dec 2025 (published 29 Apr 2026) · ASIC media release 25-286MR. All linked below.
Total and permanent disablement — the claim you make when you can never work again. Decline rates by insurer, from APRA's own workbook. Same regulator, same 12 months, same claim type.
% of finalised TPD claims declined, 12 months to Dec 2025:
% of finalised group-super TPD claims declined, 12 months to Dec 2025:
Source: APRA Life Insurance Claims and Disputes Statistics, December 2025 (published 29 April 2026) — apra.gov.au. Bars scaled within each chart. Buying TPD direct (no adviser, no super fund) fared worst of all: 31.2% of those claims were declined across the industry.
| Insurer | Avg. months to decide a TPD claim (group super) | Avg. months, income protection (group super) |
|---|---|---|
| Resolution Life | 6.9 | — |
| QInsure (ART) | 5.7 | 1.4 |
| Acenda (MLC) | 4.9 | 2.0 |
| MetLife | 4.1 | 1.6 |
| Zurich | 4.1 | 1.6 |
| AIA Australia | 3.3 | 1.7 |
| TAL | 3.0 | 1.1 |
| Industry | 3.5 | — |
Same APRA publication, 12 months to Dec 2025. Advised individual TPD claims average 7.1 months industry-wide; 12.4% of all TPD claims take over 6 months, 4.4% take over a year.
APRA also publishes how many cents in claims are paid per dollar of premium. It depends less on the insurer than on how the policy was sold to you.
99c per dollar through super.
53c per dollar bought direct.
75c per dollar through super.
43–44c advised or direct.
Accident insurance sold direct: 19c. Consumer credit insurance: 30c. Funeral insurance: 37c.
APRA Life Insurance Claims and Disputes Statistics, Dec 2025, industry-level results — claims paid ratio, 12 months to Dec 2025.
| Insurer | 2024–25 | 2023–24 |
|---|---|---|
| TAL | 625 | 502 |
| AIA Australia | 298 | 300 |
| Zurich | 188 | — |
| Resolution Life | 183 | 281 |
| MLC (Acenda) | — | 168 |
| Insurer | 2024–25 | 2023–24 |
|---|---|---|
| Suncorp | 5,343 | 5,883 |
| IAG | 3,444 | 3,592 |
| Auto & General | 3,032 | 2,940 |
| Allianz | 1,625 | 1,736 |
| QBE | 1,588 | 1,619 |
| RACQ | 1,075 | 888 |
AFCA Datacube figures as reported by insuranceNEWS.com.au (10 Nov 2025 and 18 Nov 2024); raw firm-level data at data.afca.org.au. Life-sector complaints rose 5% to 1,518 in 2024–25; denial-of-claim complaints rose 40%. Complaint counts partly reflect size — read them beside the decline rates above.
Across 12 months to Dec 2025 there were 2,913 TPD disputes and 3,194 income-protection disputes lodged over group-super cover. Of resolved disputes, insurers recorded the original decision as fully reversed in only 3–4% of cases. MetLife resolved 16 group-super death-benefit disputes in the period — and maintained its original decision in 15 of them. External review exists because internal review rarely changes the answer: take it to AFCA.
APRA, Dec 2025 publication, dispute tables.
Court outcomes and regulator actions over claims handling — each line links to the regulator's own media release.
ASIC report 831: trustees still failing to implement basic claims-handling improvements identified a year earlier. ASIC 26-116MR
Federal Court penalty for serious failures processing death and TPD claims; at one point about half its open death claims had been open more than a year. Plus ~$32m remediation to ~7,402 members. ASIC 25-286MR
Paid $37,560 over trauma claims wrongly declined citing exclusions that did not exist in the policies. ASIC 25-077MR
ASIC alleges at least 6,897 death benefit claims took between four months and four years to assess. Before the court. ASIC 25-034MR
Federal Court found a pre-existing-condition term liable to mislead; corrective disclosure ordered. ASIC 25-070MR
ASIC review: insurers failed to identify 1 in 6 complaints as complaints, and self-identified only 85 systemic issues from over 1.4 million complaints. ASIC 24-268MR
Failed to pay rehabilitation benefits to 119 customers, used stale medical definitions, misled customers; ~$11.8m remediation. ASIC 23-128MR
Federal Court found TAL breached its duty of utmost good faith on an income protection claim — a Royal Commission referral. ASIC 21-042MR
"No health questions." "No medicals." Sold on the phone in minutes — and the paperwork appeared afterwards. This isn't anecdote; it's what the regulator and the Royal Commission found, in their own words.
One direct life insurer's compliance test for new sales staff contemplated the customer being "under the impression they are only receiving paperwork and not setting up a policy".
ASIC REP 587 (2018), case study 29 — the report
"…until you start the process of payment" — a surveyed consumer. Four of eight firms refused to send policy documents until you committed and gave payment details; 22% felt they had to agree before seeing the terms.
ASIC REP 587, paras 24, 223–224
CommInsure telemarketing sales were completed in as little as eight minutes, with sales reps often selecting the level of cover for the customer. Refunds: over $12 million to about 30,000 people, plus 87 hawking convictions.
ASIC 19-314MR (2019)
ClearView admitted at the Royal Commission to roughly 300,000 anti-hawking breaches over three years — with Counsel Assisting submitting it misrepresented "whether customers were agreeing to the purchase" at all.
RC closing submissions (2018)
Customers mis-sold Freedom-brand funeral and life policies by phone — including a man with Down syndrome whose bank details were taken before agreement was ever sought — were remediated over $102m across ~83,600 people.
ASIC 22-223MR (2022)
ASIC banned cold-call sales of direct life insurance outright from 13 January 2020. Yet by 2025, dispute rates for directly sold life insurance had more than doubled since 2018 — "still notable deficiencies".
It has happened before, and the complainant won: FOS ruled for a man whose mortgage-protection application was submitted electronically without him ever completing it or knowing the policy existed — full premium refund (AFCA's own 2019 submission to ASIC, case study 4). And AFCA's standard questions for these disputes begin: "Did the complainant complete and/or sign a form?" Dispute the document. Ask who created it, when, and from what source. Then take it to AFCA — and share your paperwork here.
Method: figures are drawn from the linked regulator publications for the periods stated; masked or unverifiable figures are omitted rather than estimated. Complaint counts are raw (not adjusted for insurer size). Corrections with a source are welcome and will be published: hello@omxus.com.
The regulators publish the numbers. Only people can publish what it felt like.
Add your experience