QBE Foundation has entered into a community partnership with the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety (CWES) to extend financial guidance services for women experiencing economic abuse across Australia, particularly in regional and rural areas.
Under the partnership, QBE Foundation will fund the expansion of CWES’s Money Clinics program, which provides free, confidential financial guidance to women, non-binary, and gender diverse people who are experiencing, or are concerned about, economic abuse. Money Clinics sessions are structured to:
Forms of economic abuse can include controlling or monitoring income and spending, coerced debt, blocking access to bank accounts or wages, and interference with a person’s ability to work or study. The behaviour is often linked with family and domestic violence and can affect credit standing, housing security, and access to insurance. The program intersects with existing work on customer vulnerability, financial hardship, and family violence frameworks, including how economic abuse may appear in policy changes, claims disputes, arrears, and debt recovery.
QBE Foundation’s funding will support CWES to introduce a hybrid delivery model for Money Clinics that combines virtual appointments with mobile outreach. The model is intended to reach people who have limited access to specialist support services in their local area, including many regional and remote communities. Julie Starley, co-chair of the QBE Foundation, said the collaboration is intended to increase the availability of practical financial guidance for people affected by economic abuse. “We are proud to support CWES and the vital work they do to improve economic safety for women. By helping expand the Money Clinics program, we aim to increase access to financial guidance and resources for those facing significant challenges,” Starley said.
Co-chair Chris Esson said the partnership is directed at reducing location-based barriers to seeking help. “This partnership is about making support more accessible for women in areas where services can be harder to reach. Through mobile and virtual Money Clinics, CWES will be able to connect with more women in rural and regional areas, providing practical help that can help make a lasting impact on their economic safety,” he said.
CWES CEO and founder Rebecca Glenn said the expansion is a response to evidence that women outside major cities encounter different risk factors and fewer options for assistance. “We’re delighted to partner with QBE Foundation in developing this innovative model to support more women across Australia. The research shows us that women in rural and regional areas face higher rates of violence and abuse and greater barriers to support. This investment helps us address that gap and deliver Money Clinics to less well-served areas of Australia,” she said. The CWES partnership creates an additional referral option when frontline staff identify indicators of economic abuse in customer interactions. The initiative may also inform reviews of how joint policies and shared liabilities are handled, how disclosure is managed when safety concerns arise, and when matters should be escalated to specialist teams or external services.
The Australia Pacific QBE Foundation works with community organisations across Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, with climate resilience and inclusion as its main focus areas. The CWES initiative sits within its inclusion work and is one element of a broader system of legal, financial, and social support services engaging with people experiencing economic abuse. Within the group, QBE has set gender representation targets at senior levels. It has set goals of 40% women in leadership and 40% women on its group board by 2025 and has reported meeting those targets ahead of schedule, consistent with the 40:40 Vision framework for leadership teams. The company has also committed to a 40:40:20 balance (40% women, 40% men, and 20% any gender) on its group executive committee, supported by an “Inclusion of Diversity” framework covering recruitment, progression and leadership development. QBE has partnered with skills-based hiring firm WithYouWithMe to provide skills mapping, career matching, and digital training, with a focus on women moving into technology roles. Through the Foundation, QBE also supports programs such as Stars, which works with Indigenous girls and young women to complete school and move into further education, training, or employment.
Suncorp has also continued to develop initiatives around women’s progression into leadership roles. Its Accelerate Women in Leadership program, highlighted in 2025 diversity and inclusion reporting, provides structured learning and coaching to help women prepare for more senior positions. This is accompanied by efforts to reduce gender bias in recruitment, performance assessment, and promotion. Suncorp reports that women account for 56% of leadership roles across the group. The group runs a “Women in Insurance” profile series that features women in senior roles to illustrate career paths in the sector. The content is used internally and externally to set out examples of how women are working across underwriting, claims, distribution, and corporate functions.
Suncorp is also one of the founding supporters of LiiFT (Leaders in Insurance for Tomorrow), an industry-wide mentoring program “created by women, for women.” The program involves senior women from Suncorp, QBE, IAG, Gallagher, Aon, Hollard, and National Transport Insurance mentoring women at business or strategic leader level. Cross-organisation matching and networking events are used to give participants exposure to different business models and leadership approaches, with the stated aim of increasing the number of women in executive roles across the industry.
Allianz Australia has reported gender-related measures in its social impact reporting. In 2025, women represented 44% of senior leadership roles and 51% of management positions. The company’s managing director is a member of the Champions of Change Coalition for the Insurance Industry, which focuses on sector-level action to improve gender equality and workplace culture. Allianz maintains a family and domestic violence support framework for customers and employees, including internal policies and training. While not limited to women, these measures are designed in the context of the gendered patterns of domestic and family violence in Australia and intersect with obligations on fair treatment, hardship, and customer safety.
Across the industry, work on women’s advancement and safety continues through joint forums and codes. The Champions of Change program’s 2025 impact reporting for property and related sectors refers to “industry-wide women in insurance mentoring,” linking to initiatives such as LiiFT and related cross-company efforts. Life and general insurers are also continuing to apply guidance and codes of practice on family and domestic violence and economic abuse, which include commitments to publish policies and train staff to recognise and respond to victim-survivors.
