NAB Insurance and CommBank Insurance Join the Resilience Ratings Scheme, Taking Bushfire Premium Discounts to About Half the Australian Home Market

Two of Australia's biggest bank-branded insurers have joined a scheme that gives households a way to lower their bushfire insurance costs by proving they have made their homes safer. The Minister for Home Affairs announced on July 2, 2026 that NAB Insurance and CommBank Insurance would recognise the Resilience Ratings scheme, and Insurance Business Australia reported that half the home insurance market now prices bushfire mitigation. NAB Insurance is underwritten by Allianz, and CommBank Insurance is underwritten by Hollard. They join NRMA and Suncorp, which already used the ratings.

Resilience Ratings are produced through an app released in October 2023 by the Resilient Building Council. A homeowner answers questions or has an assessor look at the property, and the app produces a star rating that reflects how well the house is protected against bushfire. Typical measures include ember-resistant screens and vents, non-combustible roofing and cladding, and managing vegetation near the home. An insurer that recognises the rating can then use it when setting the premium.

The government's figures set out the potential benefit. Savings can reach A$840 a year for a household, the bushfire component of a premium can be reduced by up to 60 per cent, and total premium reductions range from 5 per cent to 21 per cent. These are ranges and depend on the insurer, the property and the policy, so a household should ask for a quote before assuming a particular discount. The reductions apply to the bushfire element, so a home with a small bushfire component will see a smaller saving than a home in a high-risk fringe area.

Uptake so far is substantial. More than 63,500 households across 324 local government areas have used the app, and more than 19,000 have completed three or more upgrades, spending about A$218 million between them. The Commonwealth provided A$3.2 million of funding. Those figures show that a significant amount of private money has gone into home hardening, which is the point of the scheme: premium relief gives owners a financial reason to pay for changes that also protect their families.

To explain why upgrades matter, NAB cited ratings from the Resilient Building Council. A home rated one or two stars has a 50 to 80 per cent chance of severe damage in a bushfire. For three and four stars, the chance falls to 7 to 18 per cent, and a five-star home has about a 1.5 per cent chance. These are modelled estimates rather than guarantees, but the gap between the lowest and highest ratings is the reason insurers are prepared to differentiate by rating.

The scheme is also expanding to other hazards. A multi-hazard trial now covers 1,000 Queensland households, and the Resilient Building Council estimates that about 1 million homes sit in flood-risk areas, which indicates the possible scale if flood mitigation is built into the same framework. The coverage also referred to the Hazards Insurance Partnership's guiding principles, published in March 2026, which set out how insurers and governments intend to work together on resilience and pricing.

There are limits to what the scheme can do. A rating lowers the price of the risk that a household has reduced, but it does not remove the risk, and it cannot fix problems of affordability that stem from reinsurance costs, building costs and the frequency of disasters. Households in the highest-risk areas may still face high premiums, and some upgrades are expensive. Renters and apartment owners have fewer options, since many of the useful measures concern the structure or the surrounding land.

For homeowners, the sensible next step is to check whether their insurer recognises the rating, ask what discount applies to their postcode and policy, and compare it with the cost of the upgrades. For the industry, the broader significance is that pricing for mitigation is becoming a mainstream feature rather than an experiment. With NAB and CommBank on board, a majority of customers of the largest brands could, in principle, get credit for improving their homes, and the multi-hazard work will show whether the same approach can be applied to floods and storms.

A short example shows how the numbers can be read. If a household's bushfire premium component were a few hundred dollars a year, a 60 per cent cut would be a modest saving, whereas in a high-risk area where the bushfire component is large, the same percentage could amount to hundreds of dollars and approach the stated maximum of A$840. This is an illustration of how percentages work, not a quote, and the announcements do not publish the underlying premium levels. The range of 5 to 21 per cent for total premium reductions suggests that bushfire is only a part of the premium for most households, with other perils such as storm, theft and accidental damage making up the rest.

The assessment process is worth understanding before a household starts spending. Upgrades vary in cost and effect, and the app is designed to show which changes improve the rating most. Households that are considering work should confirm with their insurer which upgrades are recognised and whether a rating needs to be refreshed after changes. Because the scheme is voluntary, a household that does nothing keeps its existing premium basis, and a household that upgrades but is insured with a provider that does not recognise the rating will not receive a discount until it changes insurer or the provider joins.

Looking forward, the participation of NAB and CommBank is a signal to the remaining insurers. If customers can obtain discounts from insurers covering half the market, the competitive pressure on others to accept the ratings or offer equivalent recognition increases. That is a market outcome the announcements describe as momentum rather than as a requirement, and any decision by other insurers remains theirs to make.