IAG says it wants to grow outside its traditional general insurance territory, but has declined to give specific details of how it will do it.

In an online discussion with shareholders, CFO Nick Hawkins described how the company is looking to simplify its geographic footprint as it pulls back from Asia but expand its product suite in home markets.

“We have sold our businesses now in Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam and we continue to have investments in Malaysia, India and a very small investment in China,” he said.

“We are more of an Australian and New Zealand business than we were three or four years ago. We see Asia as having been a successful venture for our company, but in decisions as to where to from here, we see more opportunities in Australia and New Zealand.”

Mr Hawkins says IAG has “wonderful relationships” with 8 million customers, but “we generally provide them with just general insurance products”.

“We do see opportunities for expanding our offerings, products and services, slightly broader than our existing pure-play general insurance business,” he said.

“But they have got to be things that relate to what we do.”

An IAG spokesman told insuranceNEWS.com.au it’s not possible at this stage to pinpoint areas in which the company is looking to expand.

Mr Hawkins also discussed the company’s efforts to tackle the impact of climate change.

“This is a big deal for us,” he said. “We are a very significant property insurer across Australia and New Zealand and we are very exposed.

“We invest heavily in this. We have a whole team, the natural perils team, where we have a number of scientists and others involved to make sure we understand the science of what is happening here.

“What we are seeing, of course, is increased frequency and severity of weather impacting our customers, therefore impacting us and impacting our shareholders.”

Mr Hawkins says what is more important than gathering information is what IAG does with it.

It aims to pass its knowledge to communities and governments to influence development planning and improve building standards.

“This is not a short-term gain, it is about influencing the resilience of our country over a period of time to ensure we can deal with a larger impact from weather going forward than we have in the past.”

Mr Hawkins says the Hayne royal commission was “a pretty big positive” for IAG because it did not uncover anything about the company “that we didn’t know”.

But IAG has allocated an extra $30 million a year to pay for the increased cost of compliance. “What we know is we are definitely going to have more scrutiny. We are definitely going to have more active regulators looking within our businesses.”