am writing to you with a proposition from the Australian Climbing Association. As you know, the ACA is a non-profit climbing organisation with a focus at a national level.

To get to the point, international travel insurance that covers climbing is not available locally to climbers in Australia. The reality is that insurance is a numbers game, and it requires a certain population to sustain it. But we think it can be done – if we can get the wider climbing community to support it.

The ACA has been working with a local insurer, Insure4Less, to develop a policy for Australian climbers – which is now available and already insuring climbers. But for the policy to be commercially viable the insurers need to achieve a certain number of policies. Accordingly, I would like to invite your members to use the service.

As incentive we have negotiated with insure4less to give a 10% discount to members of climbing clubs. Our preferred mechanism for this to happen is via an affiliate membership agreement. With such an agreement in place between our clubs, your members become de-facto members of our association, entitled to some benefits and discounts.

Insurance is one part of a wider effort by the ACA. There are more initiatives underway. For example, Adam Donoghue is in the process transferring the Australian Climbing Festival to the ACA, in the interests of keeping it alive for the community. Accordingly, Lee Cossey and Amanda Watts have been contracted to run the 2009 festival, and planning is well underway. If you support us, we can support and build on these kinds of initiatives.

In regard to insurance, by accepting affiliate membership, you are indicating that insurance discounts are provided via the ACA. There is no financial agreement here, the ACA doesn’t handle 1 cent of money, nor does any member of the ACA have any financial interest in insurance.

Some people will view affiliate membership as a ‘threat to local sovereignty’. But, with an affiliate agreement in place there is no threat of cannibalisation. The reality is that we see strong relationships with local clubs as being fundamentally important to a national approach. As the ACA develops we hope we can strengthen that relationship.

Of course, you are free to sidestep the ACA and go directly to insure4less. However, to do this would a) cloud any useful data that we might gather, and b) dilute any bargaining power that climbers might possess. In the future the discount may be much more. In any case, all climbers are welcome to buy insurance through insure4less without being a member.

So there it is. I trust you will present this to the committee for their consideration. I look forward to hearing your response.

In the meantime, your members are immediately free to use the insurance discount with insure4less, simply by entering ACA in the discount box. I encourage you to let them know about it ASAP.