Insurance industry players are calling for a new standard, to create a uniform policy for managing insurance in natural disasters.

The industry has produced a white paper entitled Building our Nation’s Resilience to Natural Disasters in an effort to stimulate change. The paper touts the financial benefits of a preventative approach to managing disasters, as floods, cyclones, hailstorms and bushfire continue to blight the country.

Announcing the launch of the white paper, Leona Murphy, chief strategy officer at IAG, informed the industry of the need to adopt a non-market strategy that is aligned to overall operating objectives, "Australian companies can no longer focus solely on the bottom line," she said, "the measure of performance is different in this day and age, business is part of society and we need to integrate what we do in a way that improves society... risk management is a continuum of activity that ends with insurance. Risk as a theme is not new, but our approach is different."

The insurance giant has reportedly collaborated with organisations including the Australian Red Cross, Investa Property Group, Munich Re, Optus and Westpac on a non-market strategy to proactively manage risk. It has lead to the formation of the Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience and Safer Communities, which aims to drive change, promote understanding of risk, its prevention and reduction.

More information and specific white paper recommendations are available online.