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Insurance company “preyed” on vulnerable Aboriginal people

NSW woman of the year Lynda Edwards has called on the federal government to help thousands of Aboriginal people who are still reeling almost a year after a company selling junk funeral insurance collapsed.

Aboriginal Community Benefit Fund, also known as Youpla, sold junk funeral insurance plans to Indigenous people across Australia for more than 30 years, despite concerns being raised by First Nations, financial, legal and consumer organisations.

From the early 1990s until the company’s collapse last year, it targeted Aboriginal communities by going door to door and running misleading advertisements in Indigenous publications.

In 2018, the banking royal commission found it engaged in conduct that fell below community standards in a number of respects, including that it relied on the cultural significance of funerals to Indigenous people to market its policies.

Edwards says the company “preyed on cultural values around family, community and the importance of ‘sorry business’ in social and spiritual life.”

They pressured mums into buying funeral insurance for their babies and small children.

Edwards said that governments and regulators had failed, including by approving insurance instalments to be made via Centrepay, which involves regular deductions being taken from Centrelink payments.

This kind of exploitation of First Nations people and culture is completely unacceptable and now is the time to try and make it right for the tens of thousands of families who were harmed.

Last year the Australian government created the Youpla Group Funeral Benefits Program to help the families of fund members affected by the collapse.

The program will pay a grant in place of a funeral benefit that would otherwise have been paid by Youpla. Applications will be accepted until November 30.

The Save Sorry Business coalition is asking the government to consider providing more help to those affected during its budget deliberations.

– AAP