Technology plays an increasingly important role in our business and is integral to delivering better customer outcomes. Through our North American business, NAU Country Insurance Company, America’s foremost crop insurer, we provide innovative risk management tools that support farmers with managing their field health and harvest timing.

Our team has developed two innovative technology solutions: Field Insights™ and EASYview Weather. Field Insights™ provides farmers with the most relevant and up‑to‑date data on environmental conditions, supporting better decision‑making around the ideal times for crop harvesting. Through tailored hail notifications by email, EASYview Weather enables our farming customers to verify and estimate the possibility of hail damage to their fields. Additional functions allow farmers to overlay their fields with map data from the National Commodity Crop Productivity Indexes (NCCPI) to show a ranking of soil capability to produce crops without irrigation, thereby reducing water use. Field level data, including current, future, and historical weather trends make these tools a permanent and invaluable reference for farmers in managing their farming operation’s loss risk. This improves productivity in crop management as farmers can access accurate, real‑time weather metrics.

In November, we were pleased to announce our first global disaster relief and climate resilience partnerships with two of the world’s leading humanitarian agencies, Red Cross and Save The Children.

These three-year partnerships support the rapid mobilisation of support for disaster relief activities in response to catastrophic events, and support disaster preparedness and climate resilience initiatives for vulnerable communities. Launching the partnerships,

QBE Group CEO, Pat Regan said:

“We know that when disaster strikes, it’s vital that resources can be deployed quickly to support communities, both in the immediate response and to assist in the long‑term recovery.”

“As an insurer, our immediate priority in the wake of disaster is the safety, wellbeing and ultimately recovery of our customers and the communities in which they live. Through these partnerships we’re able to support disaster recovery initiatives and enable the rapid deployment of vital resources, through two of the world’s most highly respected and trusted international disaster relief agencies.”

Mr Regan said increasingly unpredictable and potentially more severe weather-related events have the potential to cause significant economic and social consequences. “By redirecting a portion of the funds to climate resilience projects, we can support the efforts of communities to protect themselves from physical risks and potentially mitigate future disaster.”

Our employees in Australia and New Zealand can now take advantage of our new paid parental leave initiative – Share the Care – which aims to make parenting, career breaks and flexible working, business as usual for both men and women.

Share the Care eliminates the gendered terms of “primary” and “secondary” carer, instead now offering its existing 12-weeks' paid parental leave to every new parent – acknowledging the important roles all parents play within a working family.

QBE was the first general insurer in Australia, and the first organisation in New Zealand, to adopt a gender equal, flexible paid parental leave policy and we continue to explore ways to foster an inclusive workplace globally.

In 2019, QBE was ranked fifth in an annual study of the best workplaces for new dads in Australia. We were the only general insurer to make the top 10.

Some of our best ideas at QBE have come about because our people have challenged conventions or found new ways to deliver better customer outcomes.

In 2019, we invited our team of over 11,700 people globally to submit ideas for a new way to support our customers manage an existing or emerging sustainability topic – through a risk or opportunity lens.

The Global Challenge created a platform for our employees to innovate on a range of topics such as people risks, climate change, disruptive technologies, resilient and smart cities and communities, liability risks and supporting vulnerable customers.

The response from our people was overwhelming, with suggestions covering topics including workplace mental health and action on climate change. Collectively these ideas reflect the expertise and talent we have at QBE and our commitment to putting our customers at the heart of everything we do.

The four finalist submissions from the Global Challenge have received seed funding to further explore their potential.

Autonomous vehicles will have an important role in the future of mobility and like other vehicles, they will require insurance too. In Australia, we have been working closely with government, regulatory and industry bodies in developing the necessary future policies to enable autonomous vehicles onto Australian roads.

We are a proud partner to several autonomous vehicle trials, including the Armidale Regional Driverless Initiative (ARDi) which was Australia’s first driverless vehicle operating in open traffic. QBE provided the Compulsory Third Party insurance required to enable the ARDi trial to operate on public roads and, through early involvement in these trials, seek to increase our understanding of risks associated with this new technology to determine the role insurance will play in future mobility.