Your money has a voice - and we've been using it with QBE

Funding new gas and oil projects

Unless key long term business risks are clearly disclosed and managed, commercial decisions may become too focused on short- term returns, failing to consider longer term consequences.

In the case of QBE, we believe this tension is particularly clear.

As a commercial insurer, QBE supports the continued expansion of fossil fuel extraction¹. At the same time as a retail insurer, QBE has previously said that climate change may cause general insurance premiums to become unaffordable², and it has exited markets in Australia and North America in part due to climate-amplified risk³.

To understand whether QBE is prioritising short term gain over long term resilience, we’ve been asking the company to commit to clearer, more meaningful disclosure. We want to understand:

• whether QBE’s estimate of climate risk is commensurate with the warnings from climate scientists;
• the scale of the markets they expect to exit because of unaffordable premium increases resulting from increased climate risk; and
• whether climate risk is being appropriately considered in QBE’s oil and gas underwriting policy, and whether governance processes are equipped to manage that risk.

Years of engagement

We have been engaging with QBE since 2019, encouraging the company to strengthen its approach to managing climate risk, align its business with a net zero future and to disclose how it is doing this to shareholders.

Our engagement has always been grounded in practical realities. Energy prices and insurance premiums are now major pressures on household budgets, and climate change is a key driver of those increases⁴. In some cases, it is already leaving Australians unable to obtain cover at all. Read more about the link between climate risk, rising premiums and household costs here.

While we saw early signs of progress, including assurances from the Chair at the 2021 AGM that QBE does not have great appetite for new oil and gas clients or projects, and QBE joining the Net Zero Insurance Alliance in 2022, these were subsequently walked back.

In 2023, QBE exited the Net Zero Insurance Alliance. QBE’s oil and gas underwriting policy continued to allow for conventional oil and gas expansion without meaningful qualification.

We escalated our engagement in 2025, writing to the Board and, when we failed to get meaningful responses, we circulated an investor briefing setting out our concerns, raised concerns in the media, and questioned the Chair extensively at the 2025 AGM.

Despite this escalation, we did not see meaningful disclosures in QBE’s subsequent reporting. In fact, in many respects it weakened its oil and gas underwriting policy.

How we escalated in 2026

In 2026, we brought a louder voice to QBE’s AGM — not only did we ask questions, but we also brought in some climate scientists to ask questions as well and formally put climate change on the AGM agenda by co-filing shareholder resolutions with ethical share trading platform SIX.

A shareholder resolution doesn’t tell a company what to do. But it does something just as important: it brings these issues into the open and gives all shareholders a chance to signal whether they expect stronger disclosure and better governance.

In addition to the resolutions, our Ethical Stewardship Lead, Amanda Richman, SIX CEO Adam Verwey, and climate scientists Lesley Hughes (Macquarie University Professor) and Dimitri Lafleur (Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility Chief Scientist) attended the AGM and asked the Board to increase disclosure on:

• how much of QBE’s underwriting portfolio may become uninsurable in the future
• how conflicts of interest are identified and managed, particularly in relation to underwriting and climate risk

Our Stewardship Lead Amanda Richman asked some tough but important questions of QBE's Board at its AGM.

You can also hear the full story from the floor of QBE's 2026 AGM.

 
Did the resolutions gain support?

Although only around 11% of shareholders voted in favour of our resolution on climate risk disclosure, it marked the first time many investors were asked to weigh in on these risks at QBE, so it is really the start of the journey, not the end. Our questions on the day also put issues about disclosure and board accountability firmly on the public record.

We’ll continue engaging with QBE following the AGM and keep members updated on what changes, what commitments are made, and where pressure still needs to be applied.

And this work goes beyond insurers. Banks and insurers play a critical enabling role in fossil fuel expansion. Read about how banks and insurers play this enabling role in more detail here.