Grade: High Exposure to Destructive Companies
QBE Insurance Group, headquartered in Sydney but with a strong presence in the UK, is a global insurer and reinsurer with origins tracing back to 1886. The company operates across 27 countries, offering a broad range of business insurance products, from property and casualty to specialist financial lines.
|
HQ
|
Market Value
|
Investments Managed
|
Turnover
|
Insurance Products
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Australia
|
$18.8 billion
|
$30 billion
|
$21.7 billion
|
Business
|
Insurance
$
500
million
Fossil Fuel Gross Direct Premiums Written (GDPW) represent the size of QBE’s business with fossil fuel clients in 2023.
Insured by QBE
-
Climate Crisis
Tata Steel is a global industrial polluter with a notorious record of environmental harm across multiple countries. In the UK, its Port Talbot steel plant stood as one of the largest sources of industrial CO₂ emissions. Recently, it was announced that Port Talbot will be transitioning to electric furnaces, but this emerged only after Tata Steel threatened complete closure of Port Talbot, only agreeing to the transition after a £500 government subsidy.
In the Netherlands, Tata Steel is the country’s largest emitter of CO₂ and nitrogen, repeatedly fined for graphite dust, toxic clouds, and “black snow” incidents that have endangered public health and contaminated air, soil, and water. In India, local communities allege hazardous dust pollution from Tata Steel’s operations, worsening air quality and threatening residents’ health.
Insured by QBE
-
Migrant Abuse
Clearsprings Ready Homes, a notorious private provider, relentlessly profits from the UK’s asylum system, subjecting migrants to squalid, inhumane conditions. Since 2000, it has embedded itself with disturbing impunity, allowing executives like CEO Graham King to amass vast fortunes while thousands endure violence under his care.
The company’s track record is riddled with allegations of cruelty and incompetence. At a former site, Napier Barracks in Kent, asylum seekers were housed in overcrowded, vermin-infested dormitories, leading to mass COVID-19 outbreaks and a High Court ruling deeming conditions unlawful. Clearsprings’ broader dispersal accommodation network is no better; investigations consistently expose homes rife with mould, pests, and broken facilities, where families are crammed into single rooms without basic amenities. Hundreds of monthly complaints and the Home Office’s own findings of “uninhabitable” properties underscore the systemic neglect.
CASE STUDY: Weathersfield
-
Insured by QBE
- Essex
Wethersfield in Essex is a former RAF base transformed into the UK’s sole large asylum accommodation site. Ringed with barbed wire and surveillance, it houses single male asylum seekers in detention-like conditions. Reports from charities detail profound isolation, despair, and deteriorating mental health among residents, many already traumatised. Despite Home Office claims of cost-saving, the National Audit Office found Wethersfield significantly more expensive than hotels, strongly implying its use is punitive, rather than cost-saving.
I have attempted suicide personally because of the conditions of the camp. Once I tried to hang myself and once there was a group of us six or seven people tried to set ourselves on fire, they didn’t let us in the camp and extinguished the fire.
Insured by QBE
-
Gaza Genocide
ThyssenKrupp is a German industrial giant whose military technology has played a direct role in the Israeli military’s genocide in Gaza. The company’s Sa’ar 6 warships, developed in close partnership with the Israeli navy and partly funded by the German government, were operationally deployed for the first time in October 2023, during air and sea strikes on Gaza. These advanced corvettes have been instrumental in maintaining Israel’s maritime control and have reportedly been used to strike ground targets within Gaza,. ThyssenKrupp has a long history of supplying Israel with warships and submarines, embedding itself deeply within Israel’s defence infrastructure.
Insured by QBE
-
Climate Crisis
IGas Energy Development stands as Britain’s largest independent onshore oil and gas producer, with a portfolio spanning conventional hydrocarbons, shale gas, and coalbed methane across key UK regions. The company has historically championed the controversial practice of fracking in the UK, pushing for shale gas development despite widespread public opposition, scientific concerns regarding induced seismicity, and a series of government moratoriums. Despite touting the potential for “clean and safe” extraction, IGas has faced significant public opposition and regulatory pushback, with its shale ambitions now fully impaired and its licences maintained on a care-and-maintenance basis.