The Insurance Council of Australia opened public consultation on a completely rewritten General Insurance Code of Practice on 24 June 2026, with submissions closing 21 July 2026. If you work with personal lines or SME packs, this is not a distant regulatory murmur. It is happening now, and the shape of your compliance obligations for the next several years is being decided in a window that closes in weeks.
The headline change is enforceability. Pending ASIC approval, sections 1 to 9 of the Code become legally enforceable as part of the insurance contract itself, following the same model already used for the Banking Code. A breach of those sections stops being a matter for the Code Governance Committee alone and becomes a term a client can enforce. That single structural shift changes how seriously every party in the chain treats the wording.
For clients, the most visible protection is the new deemed-acceptance rule. As Paul Muir notes in his article, the new rule offers significant protection for clients. Home and motor claims left without a decision for 12 months are now automatically accepted, eliminating the ability of insurers to let difficult claims drift. For brokers managing these claims, this rule provides a hard deadline to point to when following up on behalf of their clients.
The draft also introduces an “Extra Care” vulnerability framework. Staff dealing with vulnerable clients will need trauma-informed care training, and support plans must be recorded on file. As a representative under the Code, you are inside its training, competency, and complaints-handling requirements, not observing them from the sidelines.
Scope is where the detail matters for commercial brokers. The Code narrows its “small business” definition and excludes business interruption, liability, professional indemnity, D&O, cyber, and ISR. The strongest new protections land on personal lines and SME packages rather than the more complex commercial classes. Two clients of similar size can now sit under quite different Code protections depending on what they hold, and explaining that distinction well is part of the advice you give.
There are practical mechanics to absorb too. Cash settlements for home building claims will require a Scope of Works, with clients given 20 business days to review. And the sanction for a significant breach rises to a community benefit payment of up to $200,000, indexed to CPI.
None of this is optional reading. The submission window is open, the final wording is being shaped, and the version that lands will govern how you document, disclose, and handle claims. Enforceability turns yesterday’s best-practice guidance into contractual obligation.
Keeping current with a shifting Code while running a full book is exactly the pressure our compliance and regulatory support is built to absorb. We monitor developments like this rewrite, translate them into templates and process changes you can actually use, and support you through enquiries. If you want to walk through what the new Code means for your book, start a conversation with the team.