Underwriters now ask four questions about psychosocial risk. Your clients answer with a policy document.
PsychProof is the system a client runs day to day so the answers exist in their own data: what leadership manages, what is actively controlled, how incidents are handled, what the board saw. The same record is what they will be asked for when the claim or the inspector arrives.
What the underwriter asks, and where the answer is
How is safety managed at leadership level?
Executive Overview: risk posture, control coverage and open actions by business unit, with the officer-level review trail.
Are psychosocial risks actively addressed?
The hazard register and control history by hierarchy tier, with review dates that ran and what each review decided.
How are incidents documented and investigated?
Case timelines with dated consultation, allegations put, alternative duties assessed, and escalations when a timeline slips.
What oversight does the board have over WHS?
Board-ready compliance report on Governance plans: what was raised, what was done, what is outstanding, signed off and timestamped.
Questions as reported by Barrack Broking, 2026.
The exposure, in the numbers brokers already use
Rise in mental health condition serious claims over ten years. Now 12% of all serious claims.
Safe Work Australia, 2025
Median working weeks lost, mental health condition claims against all serious claims.
Safe Work Australia, 2025
Median compensation paid, mental health condition claims against all serious claims.
Safe Work Australia, 2025
Average WHS penalty per prosecution in 2025, up 33% and the highest recorded, with 99% of prosecutions ending in a fine. All WHS, not psychosocial alone. No policy pays it in NSW, Victoria, Queensland or WA.
Safe Work Australia prosecutions data, Sep 2026; WHS Act (NSW) s272A
The risk moved. It did not shrink.
Narrower workers compensation eligibility pushes the same conduct into WHS prosecution, common law and EPL. Renewal conversations now have to cover all of it.
1 July 2026, NSW
A psychological injury claim needs a particularised “relevant event”: violence, harassment, bullying, excessive demands, trauma. General stress is out of the scheme. It is not out of the WHS Act, and it is not out of common law.
1 July 2026, NSW
Section 26A makes the Code of Practice the benchmark. SafeWork NSW added 51 inspectors, 20 dedicated to psychosocial risk, with six-monthly public enforcement reporting. Prosecution risk now runs whether or not anyone lodges a claim.
Premiums
The NSW Nominal Insurer target rate is frozen to June 2028, but individual premiums still move with claims experience, with the annual increase cap at 25% from 30 June 2026. Every jurisdiction now has enforceable psychosocial regulation; Victoria completed the set in December 2025.
One record, four policies
Every line you place for this risk ends up asking the same question of the client: what did they know, and what did they do.
Statutory liability and WHS defence costs
Penalties are uninsurable. Defence and investigation costs are not. The only thing that answers the fine itself is evidence the risk was managed. A client with a live register is a different prosecution from a client with a policy in a drawer.
Management liability and EPL
Bullying, harassment and process-driven psychological injury are the claims. The employer’s position rests on the contemporaneous record of what it knew and did. Elisha v Vision Australia: $1.44 million for the process, not the outcome.
Directors and officers
Officers owe a personal due-diligence duty under WHS Act s27. The record of what the board was told, when, and what it decided is the officer’s answer. PsychProof produces it as a by-product of running the process.
Workers compensation
Statutory schemes rate on claims experience, and psychological claims are the long ones: icare reports about half of psychological claimants back at work within a year, against 95% for physical injury. Claims caught early, with the employer already responding on the record, are shorter. From 1 July 2026 a NSW claim needs a particularised relevant event, and the employer’s answer is its own dated record.
Premium, stated plainly
PsychProof does not lower premiums and we will not tell your client it does. Statutory schemes rate on claims experience. Liability lines price on the submission and on appetite. Nothing on this page changes how an insurer prices.
What it changes is the evidence on both sides of that pricing. A client who catches a concern early, responds on the record and can show it has a shorter claim than one who finds out from the claim form. A client whose submission carries a live register, a control history and a board report is a different risk to write from one whose psychosocial section is a policy document and a training certificate.
The fine is uninsurable, and it is getting bigger. Prosecutions fell to 308 in 2025 after four years of increases; the average penalty rose 33% to $147,985, the highest on record. Regulators are bringing fewer cases and courts are pricing them higher. Under s272A in NSW and the equivalents in Victoria, Queensland and WA, no policy pays the penalty. Defence costs, yes. The penalty is answered by prevention evidence or by nothing.
PsychProof documents the duty of care. Whether that changes terms, appetite or claims cost is a matter for the insurer and for the facts of the client.
How brokers work with PsychProof
Three ways in. None of them require you to sell software.
At renewal
Ask the client for their Executive Overview and register export. Attach them to the submission. The underwriter’s four questions are answered in the client’s own data, not in a questionnaire the HR manager filled in the night before.
Inside a prevention program
If you run WHS reviews or injury-prevention work for workers compensation clients, PsychProof is where the client runs what you recommended, and where you can see whether they did. Advisor access is free for the referring broker.
Refer a client
Two ways: free advisor access to the client workspace and nothing else, or a written referral arrangement, set out so you can disclose it the way the Insurance Brokers Code expects. Your choice, per client.
A 30-minute briefing for your broking team
No pitch. What underwriters are asking about psychosocial risk and why. The NSW reforms and where the exposure went. What is and is not insurable. What a client’s Executive Overview and register export look like on a live workspace, and how to use them in a submission.
Finalist, 2026 Psychosocial Safety and Leadership Awards
Innovation in Psychosocial Risk Management, for the workflow this page describes: identification through control to review, with the record kept as it happens.
What the courts and regulators have established
The standard your client has to meet, in the order it was set
Kozarov v Victoria (2022)
A proactive duty in high-risk roles. Waiting for a complaint or visible distress is not enough.
Court Services Victoria (2023)
Criminal conviction, $379,157. No systematic identification or assessment of psychosocial hazards.
Elisha v Vision Australia (2024)
$1.44 million. The disciplinary process itself caused the injury.
Department of Defence (2025)
First Commonwealth employer conviction, $188,000 and an adverse publicity order. Performance management without training or a pause.
DoE v SafeWork NSW (No 2) (2026)
Improvement notices upheld. Investigation delay and poor communication are psychosocial hazards in their own right.
What brokers ask us
Will this lower my client’s premium?
We do not promise that, and you should not either. Statutory schemes rate on claims experience; liability lines price on the submission and the insurer’s appetite. What PsychProof changes is the evidence in both: fewer and shorter claims on the one side, a documented submission on the other. What that is worth is the underwriter’s call.
Is this a workers compensation tool or a liability tool?
It is the employer’s psychosocial risk record. Workers compensation, statutory liability, EPL and D&O all end up asking the same question of it: what did the employer know, and what did it do. One record, four policies.
What does it cost the client?
A Pilot covers one business unit of up to 50 people for $599 a month on a six-month term, credited against a rollout. Governance plans cover the whole organisation from $1,800 a month. One serious claim costs a median of $67,400 in compensation before the legal bill.
Where is the data, and who owns it?
The client owns it. Australia only, on AWS Sydney via Supabase. Sub-processors, encryption, backups and what is and is not yet independently certified are on the security page.
Read the security pageCan I see it before I put my name to it?
Yes. The briefing runs on a live workspace, and referring brokers get free professional access to their clients’ workspaces so you see exactly what the client sees.