Psychological injury claims are up 161% in a decade. The median claim costs A$67,400 and 35.7 weeks off work. Read the briefing ›
Advisory
Practice area · Insurance & benefits

One deployment, two beneficiaries.

Psychological injury is the fastest-growing claims cost, and no one yet has prevention data for harm that arrives in private messages. We work with brokers, insurers and benefits teams to design both the benefit and the data.

The opportunity

  • Employees and their families can be covered as a single benefit the employer can never look inside: employee-paid, employer-funded, or both.
  • Staff take up a benefit they control and refuse one that looks like surveillance.
  • Insurance-linked products need years of prevention and loss data. Pilots designed now can start collecting it from day one, de-identified.
  • One prevented claim funds coverage for hundreds of workers for a year.

The evidence

A$67,400Median psychological injury claim, against A$16,300 for all serious claims.Safe Work Australia, Key WHS Statistics 2025
35.7 weeksMedian time off for a psychological injury claim, against 7.4 weeks for all serious claims.Safe Work Australia, Key WHS Statistics 2025
161%Growth in psychological injury claims over a decade.Safe Work Australia, Key WHS Statistics 2025

What discovery settles

  • Benefit design: individual or family cover, voluntary, employer-funded or hybrid.
  • Which lines the data could inform, such as income protection and management liability.
  • A de-identified data specification: categories, severity bands and volumes, never content or identities.
  • Consent and privacy design that holds up to employee scrutiny.
  • Pilot design with an employer client, instrumented for outcomes from the start.

Obligations in scope

  • Privacy law and consent for de-identified data.
  • Insurance distribution and disclosure rules for the benefit structure.
  • Employer WHS and positive-duty obligations the benefit supports.

What you hold at the end

  • A benefit design ready for a voluntary or employer-funded menu.
  • A data specification your actuaries can review.
  • A pilot plan with an employer client, with success measures agreed.

How an engagement runs

Each step is its own decision. You only go further when the last one has earned it.

01 · Free

Desktop audit

A short review of how harm reaches your people today, from your intake answers and a call.

Request a briefing ›
02 · Paid

Audit & organisational plan

Your departments mapped against the harms and obligations in scope, checked against a framework built with specialist employment counsel.

03 · Pilot

A private first cohort

Around ten people, fully private, with no automatic escalation. Training and hands-on onboarding included, measured against a baseline.

04 · Policy

Policy & escalation

Your policies built into the escalation pathways, mapped with counsel and your broker, so the board can show its obligation is met.

05 · Run

Twelve-month term

Quarterly reviews, threshold tuning, refresher training and a board report on what the control is doing.

Research briefing · October 2026

Psychological injury and the private message

Mental-health claims are up 161% in a decade and harassment, bullying and violence cause almost half of mental stress claims. What the data shows, why employers cannot simply look, and what a defensible control looks like.

Read the briefing › Download PDF

Ready to get started?

Benefit first, insurance-linked product later. Discovery sets up both.