What is Family Violence?
Family violence is “violent, threatening, or other behaviour by a person that coerces or controls a member of the person’s family…or causes the family member to be fearful.”[*].
Family violence includes physical violence, emotional abuse, financial or economic abuse and damage to property.
Australasia Underwriting’s promise to you
We are committed to providing support to our customers affected by family violence.
We will achieve this through training and support of our employees and distributors, engaging you with sensitivity, dignity, respect and compassion and protecting your information and privacy. We will also refer you to specialist support services that can help you with family violence.
Your safety is paramount to us
Whenever family violence is identified or suspected, our priority is the safety of the person affected by family violence and the protection of their family. We will strive for the early recognition of family violence.
How we will deliver upon our promise
We will ensure our employees and distributors have training so that they are aware of our family violence procedures and can identify and deal appropriately and sensitively with customers affected by family violence.
We will protect private and confidential information of customers affected by family violence through our Privacy Policy ensuring that their information is secure.
We will minimise the number of times that our customers need to tell us that they have been affected by family violence.
Our claims handling processes will be appropriate and sensitive should our customers need to make a claim under their insurance policy with us and they are affected by family violence.
We will adopt a different process and consider the risk if we are aware that a customer’s debt involves a situation of family violence.
We will arrange for our customers to access Financial Hardship help and include customers affected by family violence in our internal financial hardship guidelines.
We will inform our customers, employees, distributors and service suppliers about information and assistance to people experiencing family violence.
We will refer our customers, employees and distributors to specialist services.
We will support our employees and distributors who are affected by family violence or where they have assisted a customer affected by family violence.
Support for our customers
If you are an Australasia Underwriting customer and are affected by family violence, you can contact us by calling 1300 988 643 Monday to Friday between 8:30am and 5:00pm and ask to speak to our Family Violence Officer.
Specialist services
The following organisations can assist you with family violence issues:
Domestic Violence Advice & Support
- 1800RESPECT:1800respect.org.au or at 1800 737 732 (24hrs).
- National Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault helpline:1800 200 526 (24hrs)
- Domestic Violence Crisis Service:1300 782 200 (24hrs)
- Family Violence Response and Counselling Referral Line:1800 633 937 (24hrs)
[*] Family Law Act 1976 (CTH), section 4AB
