AILA Introduces New Membership Categories

The Australian Insurance Law Association is introducing a new, cheaper membership category for industry members.

From 1 July 2020, industry representatives, including brokers, insurers, claims managers, reinsurers, in-house counsel and risk managers, can join AILA for just $50.

AILA National President Cameron Roberts, a partner at Thomson Geer, Melbourne, said the National Board’s aim was to encourage greater membership outside insurance lawyers to diversify the membership and enhance networking opportunities between the insurance industry and lawyers.
“When I became National President 18 months ago, my goal was to better serve the entire insurance industry, not just insurance lawyers,” he said.

Mr Roberts proposed achieving that firstly by getting more industry representatives on the National Board to give AILA a broader understanding of what the industry needed. That has been successful with equal board representation.

His second goal was to increase AILA’s value to industry members by reducing the cost of joining and increasing the advantages of membership.

That has been achieved through the significant reduction in the membership cost for industry members.

It has also been accomplished by including New Zealand Insurance Law Association membership as complimentary for all AILA members. (NZILA members will receive the reciprocal benefit.)

“The agreement with NZILA adds to many other initiatives implemented to increase the advantages of AILA membership, including mandatory membership price differentials, the Gill Award – which offers a $A10,000 prize – and moving to webinar presentations.

“We hope the webinars, in particular, will enable industry to achieve significant CPD cost savings, both via direct costs and indirect costs caused by disruption,” Mr Roberts said.

“We have more work to do, and the next 12 months will focus on a new IT roll out and other initiatives to further increase the advantages of AILA membership.”

The new reduced insurance industry membership rate is part of a significant streamlining of AILA’s membership categories.

From 1 July 2020, the 14 membership categories will be reduced to six. They are:



Mr Roberts said the reciprocal membership arrangement with NZILA would encourage greater involvement in each organisation’s activities. “With so many events being held via webinars, AILA and NZILA members can participate more easily in each other’s events and pay only member rates.”
The revised membership categories would make it much simpler for existing members to renew and new members to join.
Mr Roberts said the AILA National Board was always seeking new ways to make AILA educational events and networking opportunities more accessible to a broader range of people across the industry.