Governance

Corporate governance and sound risk management practices enable us to build a strong foundation as a modern mutual, achieve longevity and sustainability in our business, and strengthen and support our commercial viability.

A culture of compliance and transparency across Australian Unity helps us manage our risk. It informs our strategic decision-making to ensure we achieve our vision to create positive societal change. And it benefits our members, customers, employees and community by ensuring we engage in sustainable business practices.

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Our governance structure

Australian Unity is governed by its Board, which is predominantly composed of independent non-executive directors. The Board sets the strategic direction of the Group, its risk management framework and risk appetite. It is supported by committees.

The Group Managing Director reports to the Board and, alongside the Group Leadership Team, is responsible for managing day-to-day operations.

Diagram of Australian Unity Limited Board structure.

We promote sound risk culture and good decision-making

We do this by:

Identifying areas of risk and improvement through robust data-driven reporting.
Using operational metrics and surveys to monitor and assess our risk culture.
Encouraging a culture of “speak up if something isn’t right” among our employees.
Providing continuous learning opportunities for our leaders on risk-based decision-making.
Streamlining our governance processes and structures to make them more efficient and easier to action.

We encourage honest and transparent communication

We do this by:

Promoting and encouraging open communication with our customers, members and regulators.
Updating our Continuous Disclosure Policy to make it easier for employees to understand and comply with.
Updating the governance disclosures in our annual report to more closely align with ASX’s Corporate Governance Council’s Principles and Recommendations (4th edition).

We support our people with policies, education and training

We do this by:

Regularly updating key policies and guidelines to make it easier for our employees to adhere to our legal obligations and to demonstrate our values of Bold, Warm and Honest.
Making training about privacy, cybersecurity awareness, incident management and anti-money laundering more accessible, easier to understand and more relevant.
Introducing our Responsible Use of Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy, which outlines our approach to using data and AI responsibly, transparently and compliantly.

Key policies

The following policies play an important role in helping us achieve our ambition to become Australia’s most trusted wellbeing company.

Diversity and Inclusion

We support and celebrate the diversity of our people by fostering a discrimination-free, equal-opportunity and respectful workplace. Our policies seek to build an inclusive workplace culture where our people, and those we work with, can be the best they can be.

Modern Slavery

The right to work free from slavery is a basic human right—and central to our philosophy of providing a safe workplace. Our Modern Slavery Statement outlines strategies to mitigate the risk of slavery, and our suppliers are expected to comply with principles outlined in our Supplier Code of Conduct.

Anti-Bribery, Corruption and Whistleblowing

We have zero tolerance for bribery, fraud, corruption and other serious criminal offences. Our employees are required to actively protect our reputation and to conduct business with honesty and integrity. Clear whistleblowing protection policies and independent procedures support our people to report actual or suspected improper conduct.

Cyber Risk, Privacy and Data Protection

We take managing and protecting sensitive information seriously and have extensive governance and operations arrangements in place that comply with Privacy Laws, APRA’s Prudential Standard for Information Security (CPS 234) and requirements for Australian Financial Services Licensees. We also benchmark our information security control environment against the NIST Cyber Security Framework.