Australian insurers lost more than $650 million on home insurance policies over the past four years and the industry warns premiums will continue to soar without better planning laws and investment in infrastructure to reduce the mounting cost of natural disasters.

The losses came despite home insurance premiums rising more than 50 per cent since 2020. That rise meant 12 per cent of Australian households were now “affordability stressed”, meaning 1.24 million spent more than four weeks of income on home insurance premiums, the Actuaries Institute estimates.