Nearly 800 delegates, 85 exhibitors and 50 speakers are attending the National Insurance Brokers (NIBA) Convention 2024 in Adelaide’s Convention Centre. This flagship event aims to find new ways for brokers to articulate their value and help them more effectively deal with serious industry challenges. Those challenges include increasing customer demands, regulatory issues around transparency and sharply rising premiums.
Uncle Moogy, a Ngarrindjeri Elder, officially kicked things off with a Welcome to Country. That was followed by a singalong led by Song Division, keynote speeches, panel discussions and lively networking in the marketplace next door (pictured immediately below).
The Convention’s theme is, Beyond The Status Quo. Speakers on day one of this two-day event said that many brokers and insurers could be facing the most difficult challenges in their industry’s history. Customer expectations and weather driven catastrophes are two of the leading concerns.
The peak broker body is firmly suggesting that, to meet these challenges, change is needed and sticking with what’s worked in the past is not an option.
Richard Klipin (pictured immediately below), only a few months into his role as NIBA CEO, said that the “power of community” is key to solving these challenges. He said a recent trip with brokers allowed them to see the town of Coraki in northern NSW and “communities that were absolutely smashed by the 2022 floods.”
“We saw really front and centre, the role of broking to help communities weather the storm, be resilient and come through the other side,” he said. “I think that’s some of the stuff that we’ve got to start to think about.”
Klipin said communities are powerful, “particularly when they’re united and stand together on key issues.”
When NIBA’s president Gary Okely replaced Klipin on the stage, he raised some of the key issues.
“My observation would be that there’s been a real, external push for consumerism,” he said. “That’s my word, not anyone else’s.”
He referred to the government’s inquiry into insurers’ response to the 2022 floods.
The inquiry released its report on Friday with 86 recommendations. Among those, calls to make the General Insurance Code of Practice enforceable through insurance contracts, standardised key insurance terms and new regulatory guidance on the use of expert reports.
Okely said this should be seen as an opportunity for brokers to “really thrive.”
Okely said on “tough issues” like this, NIBA is doing its best to take the initiative rather than be reactive.
“We want more breach reporting to come through to the IBCCC,” said Okely. “I think it’s really important that we learn from what we do.”
Before the other sessions got underway, Rachael Zaltron, one of the founders of Backpacks 4 SA Kids, was interviewed on stage by Klipin.
This South Australian charity provides 6,500 backpacks for vulnerable children each year, many of them suffering domestic abuse and homelessness. Fifty dollars ($50), she said, can provide a summer and winter outfit for a child. Delegates were encouraged to donate.
Shane Fitzsimons gave the opening keynote. Fitzsimons is currently MD of SAF Leading Advisory but for more than 10 years he was Commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS), including through the infamous Black Summer bushfires of 2019-20.
The Convention’s MC, Gemma Acton, Channel 7 finance editor, said Fitzsimons turned down tea with the visiting monarch, King Charles, to attend today’s NIBA event.
He talked about the astonishing sequence and combination of natural disasters and events that have occurred since that Black Summer, including bushfires, floods, droughts, cyberattacks, biosecurity threats and COVID-19.
He also suggested that brokers have a head start in terms of what’s needed to face some of these ongoing challenges.
“We talk about recovery, we talk about reconstruction, repair, renewal, rebuilding [but] we don’t always talk about the word ‘healing’,” said Fitzsimons. “I’m very mindful of the extraordinary work that our brokers have done right across the country, not just in your day-to-day work.”
He said even small gestures of kindness to customers can be very important.
“It’s the little things we do that truly matter,” he said.
In the session, Tackling the key challenges facing the general insurance industry (pictured top), the Insurance Council of Australia’s (ICA’s) CEO, Andrew Hall, said “the critical challenges are around meeting ongoing change in community expectations and doing that from a basis of trust.”
He said the current risk environment, including extreme weather events, is constantly setting new benchmarks.
“The reality is insurers and brokers are selling a promise and that promise is that they will put you back into a place you were before the unexpected happened, and that expectation continues to evolve,” said Hall.
He said Fitzsimons’ presentation reminded him of the scale of this challenge.
“That’s our big challenge moving forward, because if we keep failing that test, we lose the trust of the community, [and] we lose our license to operate,” said Hall.
Sharply rising insurance premiums add difficulty to that test. In that context, Acton asked the panel how brokers could do a better job communicating their value?
“I think a huge piece of this is transparency and being really honest with our clients as to what is driving the particular environment that they’re in,” said Jennifer Richards, CEO of Aon Australia.
Richards said it’s important for brokers not to shy away from these discussions.
“I think so frequently people [brokers] will be apologetic, or look to say, ‘It’s not that expensive,’ but that does not create trust,” she said.
Richards suggested one reason for optimism is the data that is now available.
“I was recently in Chicago where we were demonstrating for our board some of the new analytic innovations that we’ve developed and it was so amazing to be able to watch on a real time basis, changing retention levels, risk appetite, and being able to see [also] in real time how the market would respond to different variables,” she said.
Supportable facts and outcomes are what can engender trust from customers, she said.
“It takes away a lot of the mystery around our industry,” said Richards. “Frequently in the past, clients have said to me, ‘All this seems like a bit of a dark art.’”
The CEO said the more the industry gets away from ‘the dark art,’ the better for the industry, “and our relevance.”
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