Allianz Partners is a major health insurer for international students studying in Australia. Early last year, a Monash University study showed financial pressures were causing many of these students to skip meals, adversely impacting their health. In response, the giant insurer teamed up with Foodbank Australia.
The partnership could show how insurers can help ease urgent community challenges and at the same time prevent claims.
By the end of 2024, Allianz Partners and Foodbank had fed more than 4,500 international students with eight market style events organised on university campuses in Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland. The students, according to Foodbank, each received a bag with an average of 10kg of healthy food, including fresh fruit and vegetables.
“This is an example of where insurance is not just a product,” said Vinay Surana (pictured above), Allianz Partners’ regional managing director for the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa.
Singapore-based Surana told Insurance Business that the Foodbank partnership was a way of bringing a “full value proposition” to student health insurance customers by understanding their “pain points.”
Insurance, he said, needs to be much more than paying claims.
“We have an obligation to help prevent the claim or prevent a loss from happening and we have an obligation to assist you in a non-claim situation,” said Surana. “If the situation is clear, we'll absolutely do everything that is within our power to make sure that you are assisted to the best of our ability.”
Surana suggested that the Foodbank partnership was taking learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic a step further.
“I think during COVID, we obviously saw significant challenges, where either students were stranded in the so-called destination countries, or if they were back home, they could not come back,” he said.
Those concerns were one reason, he said, that Allianz Partners did “deep research” into what challenges international students are facing.
Its State of Student Healthcare Report (2023) and Foodbank’s Hunger Report (2024) highlighted the significant food insecurity issues facing families and individuals living and working in Australia.
The Student Healthcare Report found that more than half the students facing financial stress are unable to afford fresh, healthy food options. The Hunger Report pointed to serious food insecurity issues across the country with about one third of Australian households experiencing either severe or moderate food insecurity in 2024.
“We found out that a lot of students are challenged with the cost-of-living and they were going hungry,” he said. “So we partnered with Foodbank as a way of saying that, as an insurer, it is our obligation as part of the community we operate in to help the students.”
According to an Allianz Partners media release, the insurer provided more than $120,000 worth of food.
“The rising cost-of-living has led international students to rely on charitable organisations to meet their most basic needs, emphasising the need for further support,” said Miranda Fennell, executive head of health for Allianz Partners Australia. “We want to ensure the wider international student community is receiving the support they need so they can focus on their education and fully experience living in Australia.”
IB approached Foodbank for their view on the partnership and its impact. Jess Watkinson, CEO of Foodbank Queensland, said the results were significant but they also demonstrated the level of need.
“These markets highlighted the significant need for food relief for our international students, and the evaluation showed the significant impact the markets had for many students,” she said.
“With the cost-of-living crisis showing no signs of slowing down, we are calling on corporate Australia, including insurers, to partner with us to enable us to source food relief to those doing it tough, including international students,” she said.
Watkinson said, in this difficult situation, ongoing initiatives, including food relief markets, will be needed to provide support to international students.
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