Federal government called to help Aboriginal families affected by Youpla collapse

Over 120 legal, health, and social services organisations have joined forces to launch a campaign calling for the federal government to help thousands of Aboriginal families affected by their funeral insurer’s liquidation.

Gold Coast-based Youpla Group (Youpla or group), previously the Aboriginal Community Benefit Fund (ACBF), had been selling funeral insurance exclusively to Aboriginal people, including babies and children, for decades. However, it went into liquidation in March 2022, a year after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) began investigating Youpla when the Banking Royal Commission accused it of falsely marketing itself as an Indigenous-owned business.

With over 13,000 low-income Aboriginal people left without funeral insurance, the Save Sorry Business coalition – with members including consumer advocate Choice, the Australian Council of Social Services (Acoss), and Anglicare – has urged the federal government to provide urgent assistance to the affected families who need to pay for funerals and policyholders “in the final stages of their lives.”

“People have paid for funeral cover to ensure their families can carry out Sorry Business and grieve together — not to be left with the challenges of intergenerational debt and hardship,” the coalition said, as reported by The Guardian.

Read more: Funeral insurer ACBF Fund 2 goes into liquidation

The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) has received more than 700 complaints against Youpla since 2018 and issued 178 decisions against the group for “misleading and deceptive conduct.”

The Australian Labor Party vowed to conduct an inquiry if it wins to investigate the role played by Youpla’s directors and the bodies that regulated them – ASIC and NSW Fair Trading.

In 2019, the party wrote to the government, warning that Aboriginal families would be “ripped off twice” if the funeral insurer collapsed. However, Labor shadow assistant treasurer Stephen Jones claimed that the government did not respond to the letter.

“Clearly, whoever wins the next election is going to have to deal with this issue and face up to the fact that the government has been negligent,” Jones said, as reported by The Guardian.