Consumer advocacy group Choice has spotlighted nib in its 19th annual Shonky Awards for charging excessively high premiums to single parents compared to couples for the same level of coverage in health insurance.
The specific criticism focused on nib's Gold Top Hospital cover plan, where single parents wanting to add a child with Basic Extras and a $750 excess would see their premiums double. In contrast, couples including a child under identical conditions would only see a marginal cost increase of about 4%.
Choice’s editorial director, Mark Serrels, even went as far as to call nib the “worst of a bad bunch.”
“It’s the one that made me the maddest. For single parents to be charged more for health insurance… I just think that’s completely out there,” Serrels said.
In defense of their pricing policy, a nib spokesperson told The Guardian that the costs reflect the inherent expenses associated with servicing these policies. They said that, despite higher costs, single parents could add multiple children to their policy without further charges, potentially offering better value for larger families.
Beyond nib, the Shonky Awards cast a critical eye on Meta for its failure to adequately protect users from scams on its platforms, with Choice pointing to substantial financial losses suffered by Australians due to social media scams.
The awards also called out Acerpure Clean Lite stick vacuum for being difficult to maintain and performing poorly in efficiency tests; and Daily Juice Co. for misleading the public by using green food coloring in products to be marketed as green juices even if it lacked vegetable content.
The Shonky Awards are hosted annually to highlight the worst products and services of the year. These awards publicly expose companies and products that fail to meet basic standards of quality, fairness, and transparency, aiming to encourage better practices across various industries.
