The chief executive of insurance giant QBE has criticised Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s threats to break up insurers, claiming forced divestiture would not lower the cost of premiums for Australians.
Unveiling a full-year profit of $2.8 billion, an increase of 30 per cent on the prior year, on Friday, Andrew Horton said the insurance industry was already highly competitive, and Dutton’s threats to force insurers to divest their assets would not make it any more competitive.
QBE chief executive Andrew Horton has criticised Peter Dutton’s threats to the insurance industry.Credit: Oscar Colman
“It’s been a combination of things that’s driven the price: it has been the cost of catastrophes, it’s been inflation in terms of repairing houses and the cost of cars going up,” Horton said in an interview.
“So I don’t agree we need to break it up. I think there’s competition in the marketplace … We do really appreciate the cost-of-living issue, and we do want to work with governments and states on how to mitigate the risks because we need to lower the risk of buildings being impacted by catastrophes, and to do that, we need to look at building codes.”
Dutton put “the insurance industry on notice” this week, warning them that if elected at the next federal election due by May, the Coalition “would deal with the industry”.
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The opposition leader has issued similar threats to Coles and Woolworths, which he had accused of price gouging.
“We can’t have people who can’t afford to insure against public liability, we can’t have businesses who can’t conduct their tourism operations because they can’t get insurance,” Dutton said earlier this week.
“And we can’t have people going without car insurance because their premiums have gone up by 20 or 30 or 40 per cent, it’s unacceptable.”
