How much did your insurance really go up?

Australian car and home insurance premiums have risen well ahead of general inflation in recent years. Insurers point to real cost pressures: more frequent floods and storms, higher rebuilding and repair costs, pricier car parts, and rising reinsurance premiums (the insurance that insurers themselves buy).

But market-wide pressure only explains part of your renewal. The rest is how you are priced — and that's where the so-called loyalty tax comes in.

Most insurers offer their sharpest prices to new customers and quietly step up premiums for people who auto-renew year after year. The practice is legal in Australia, and the ACCC and ASIC have both flagged it. The result: two identical households on the same street can pay very different premiums simply because one of them re-quotes every year and the other doesn't.

The calculator above makes the step-up visible. If your premium is rising faster than roughly 5–10% a year with no claims and no change in circumstances, a chunk of that increase is likely loyalty pricing rather than risk.

• Ask your insurer to explain it. A single phone call — "my renewal went up 22%, what changed?" — often produces a retention discount on the spot.
• Get two comparison quotes before the renewal date. Even if you stay, a competitor's quote is your best negotiating tool.
• Check the excess and sum insured. Raising your excess or correcting an inflated sum insured can cut the premium without cutting real cover.
• Keep last year's certificate. You can't spot a step-up if you don't know what you paid. Insuro stores every year's premium automatically, so next renewal the comparison is already done.

This calculator works for one policy, one year at a time. Insuro does it for every policy you own, every year: forward your renewal email and it extracts the premium, compares it with last year's, and tells you the increase before you're asked to pay — with reminders 30, 14 and 7 days before the renewal locks in.