Australian travel insurance: what travellers pay and what comes back as claims
These are industry statistics for travel as a class of business, not figures about any one policy. For what a traveller can actually buy, start at who insures what, and what it covers.
What the number does and does not mean
The figure is claims as a share of premium: the share of what travellers paid that came back to them as claims. The rest pays commission and the cost of selling the cover, claims handling, reinsurance, tax and profit. It is an aggregate across every insurer and every kind of trip, so it describes the class, not any one policy, and it is money rather than claim counts — it is not the share of claims that get paid.
Travel cover is bought for a low-probability, very expensive event: an overseas hospital admission, an evacuation, a cancelled trip already paid for. The case for insuring a trip does not rest on the class average. What the ratio does say is that travel is priced with a wider margin over expected claims than home or motor, so the price is worth shopping and the limits worth reading.
Every class of general insurance, FY26
Ranked by the share of premium returned as claims, lowest first. Reinsurance is left out of the chart because it does not behave like a retail class, but it is in the table.
| Rank | Class of business | Insurance revenue | Incurred claims | Returned as claims |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mortgage | $893m | $100m | 11.2% |
| 2 | Non-proportional reinsurance | $2.45bn | $762m | 31.2% |
| 3 | Fire and ISR | $9.24bn | $4.67bn | 50.5% |
| 4 | Travel | $1.66bn | $858m | 51.7% |
| 5 | Other direct | $1.88bn | $991m | 52.8% |
| 6 | Directors and officers | $889m | $486m | 54.7% |
| 7 | Other accident | $1.31bn | $737m | 56.4% |
| 8 | Public and product liability | $3.84bn | $2.19bn | 57.0% |
| 9 | Marine and aviation | $1.21bn | $748m | 61.7% |
| 10 | Cyber | $202m | $137m | 67.8% |
| 11 | Commercial motor | $5.00bn | $3.40bn | 68.0% |
| 12 | Householders | $17.15bn | $11.79bn | 68.7% |
| 13 | Domestic motor | $18.36bn | $12.83bn | 69.9% |
| 14 | Proportional reinsurance | $7.28bn | $5.12bn | 70.4% |
| 15 | Consumer credit | $28m | $20m | 71.4% |
| 16 | Professional indemnity | $2.33bn | $1.73bn | 74.2% |
| 17 | Employers liability | $3.45bn | $2.64bn | 76.4% |
| 18 | CTP | $4.07bn | $3.79bn | 93.1% |
Travel by financial year
A year is reported only when all four of its quarters are published and none of its cells is confidential. Where one is, the ratio is withheld rather than computed from the quarters that happen to be public, and the reason is given.
| Year to 30 June | Insurance revenue | Incurred claims | Returned as claims | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY24 | $1.18bn | $502m | withheld | only 3 of 4 quarters are published on this basis |
| FY25 | $1.75bn | $820m | 46.8% | |
| FY26 | $1.66bn | $858m | 51.7% |
And by quarter
| Quarter | Insurance revenue | Incurred claims | Returned as claims |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2024 | $476m | $223m | 46.8% |
| Dec 2024 | $412m | $216m | 52.4% |
| Mar 2025 | $404m | $176m | 43.6% |
| Jun 2025 | $459m | $205m | 44.7% |
| Sep 2025 | $463m | $233m | 50.3% |
| Dec 2025 | $402m | $204m | 50.7% |
| Mar 2026 | $393m | $217m | 55.2% |
| Jun 2026 | $401m | $204m | 50.9% |
The series before September 2023 is a different measurement
AASB 17 changed what general insurers report. The quarters to June 2023 are gross earned premium and gross incurred claims; those from September 2023 are insurance revenue and incurred claims. They are different measurements of related things.
Do not join the two series into one line or compute a change across 2023. Compare a year with another year on the same basis.
On that earlier basis the class runs from 30 September 2010 to 30 June 2023. The closed border years are visible in it: premium collapsed when nobody travelled, while claims on trips already insured kept arriving.
| Year to 30 June | Gross earned premium | Gross incurred claims | Returned as claims |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY11 | $733m | $306m | 41.7% |
| FY12 | $793m | $332m | 41.9% |
| FY13 | $786m | $311m | 39.6% |
| FY14 | $810m | $357m | 44.1% |
| FY15 | $922m | $463m | 50.2% |
| FY16 | $966m | $544m | 56.3% |
| FY17 | $1.01bn | $470m | 46.5% |
| FY18 | $1.10bn | $450m | 40.8% |
| FY19 | $1.17bn | $627m | 53.5% |
| FY20 | $1.00bn | $685m | 68.5% |
| FY21 | $218m | $73m | 33.5% |
| FY22 | $404m | $184m | 45.5% |
| FY23 | $1.33bn | $603m | 45.4% |
By state
The state is where the policy was written, not where the traveller went or what their trip cost. A travel premium is not set by the buyer's state the way a health insurance premium is, so these figures say where the business is and how it ran there; they are not a price a reader in that state would be quoted, and a reader should not be moved between states on the strength of them.
The ACT, the Northern Territory and Tasmania each write a small enough share of the class that one quarter's claims moves their ratio by tens of percentage points. Read the revenue column beside the ratio before quoting one of them.
| Rank | Written in | Insurance revenue | Incurred claims | Returned as claims |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | QLD Queensland | $215m | $76m | 35.3% |
| 2 | TAS Tasmania | $13m | $5m | 38.5% |
| 3 | SA South Australia | $87m | $34m | 39.1% |
| 4 | VIC Victoria | $268m | $107m | 39.9% |
| 5 | WA Western Australia | $122m | $49m | 40.2% |
| 6 | ACT Australian Capital Territory | $16m | $8m | 50.0% |
| 7 | NSW New South Wales | $654m | $402m | 61.5% |
| 8 | NT Northern Territory | $4m | $3m | 75.0% |
The state figures come from a different APRA data item than the national one and do not sum to it: $1.38bn against $1.66bn, leaving $280m the state series does not allocate.
The data
class-series.json: both series by quarter and financial year, and every class ranked.by-state.json: the same by state and territory.- Who insures what, and what it covers — the travel insurers, brands and plans.
Source: APRA Quarterly General Insurance Performance Statistics, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, used under CC BY 3.0 AU. Amounts are A$ millions as APRA publishes them, rounded to the
nearest million. Confidential cells are published by APRA as * and are carried here as null,
never as zero.
Deep Almanac is a secondary source and this page is provided for general information and reference. It is not financial, investment, legal, valuation, educational or other professional advice, and it is not a substitute for checking the original source. This dataset holds no travel insurance premiums, because no price list is published for them: it reports what travellers pay in premiums and what comes back as claims across the whole class of business, what each policy covers, and who is authorised to underwrite it. It cannot tell you what a trip would cost to insure, and a class-wide ratio says nothing about any one insurer or trip. You are responsible for any decision you or your software makes in reliance on this page. See our terms of use.