Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand (GSANZ) was established to address the critical, contemporary issues facing women, children and families. We work to advance equity and social justice, and to support our communities to thrive.

We aspire for all women, children and families to be safe, well, strong and connected. One of the central ways in which we achieve this goal is through aspiring to create financially resilient communities.

We are of the view that financially resilient communities are better equipped to recover from the impacts of unforeseen events, such as natural disasters. GSANZ has been a champion for financial inclusion and resilience for a number of years and believes that access to general insurance is one of the 3 pillars of financial inclusion, the other two being banking and access to credit.

Unfortunately, people on low incomes are often excluded from general insurance protection due to known barriers such as affordability, accessibility, lack of understanding and/or trust. This problem has been further exacerbated by the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters.

Given the importance of insurance in creating financially inclusive and resilient societies, Good Shepherd has been committed to tackling these issues through its Good Insurance program. Since 2013, Good Insurance has worked with the insurance industry to develop affordable and accessible insurance products for people on low incomes.

We utilise a human-centred co-design approach that puts our clients (including those in disaster-prone areas of Australia) at the heart of this process. The consequence is that we are able to create products that have unique features especially suitable for the most vulnerable women, children and families in our society. 

In addition to creating insurance products tailored to the needs of women, children and families on low incomes, our Good Insurance program also partners with various state governments to raise awareness through action-oriented guides that highlight the importance of insurance in creating financial resilience ahead of a disaster event.  

Beginning in 2016 in collaboration with the QLD government, we designed, published & distributed 30,000 copies of our award-winning “Money Ready Toolkit”, which is a community booklet providing a range of Queensland-specific information and guidance about how to be more ‘Money Ready’ in the face of natural disasters. Since then, we have delivered similar projects working with the South Australian, Victorian and (WIP) NSW Governments to produce action-oriented guides.

There is tremendous scope for collaboration between the community sector, government and the insurance industry to tackle the insurance affordability and accessibility concerns in disaster prone areas. GSANZ aims to be at the forefront of these efforts.

If you are interested in more information or partnering with us, please contact Ananya Tiwari, at ananya.tiwari@goodshep.org.au, or on 0406 433 100.

About the Author:

Ananya Tiwari is the Insurance Program Lead at Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand. She is a qualified lawyer and insurance professional with experience across various areas of the industry. She has particular expertise in microinsurance, which is a subset of the of insurance industry focusing on creating insurance solutions for and with people on low incomes.