Best Insurance Companies in Australia |
Brokers on Insurers 2023

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Brokers pick their best insurers

Insurance Business tasked hundreds of brokers with ranking nine insurers across 11 categories to help determine the leading insurers in Australia.

Brokers also revealed the challenging aspects of working with insurers, which included the following:

“The art of underwriting is declining as insurers move to auto-rate, standardised guidelines. They want limited touch.”
“Underwriters just don’t answer the phone, and when the gatekeeper says they will call you, it never happens. I would say we spend just as much time, if not more, chasing insurers than we do the insured.”
“Claims management and new people coming onboard with staffing changes.”
“Lack of service and lack of knowledge: insurers are more focused on internal issues, so you can hardly ever get hold of underwriters or claims staff (almost 90% of the time you do not get hold of anyone on the first attempt, and in some cases, it takes days for your call to be returned).”
“Insurers are not thinking outside the box and taking a one-size-fits-all approach.”
“Significant increases in pricing and changes in underwriting guidelines with a lack of appetite for higher-risk clients.”
“In an age where businesses are having to be innovative to remain relevant by offering new or additional products and services, insurers are struggling to keep up. If it is even close to outside of the insurers’ perceived box, it’s a decline from most of them.”

All of IB’s winners are delivering and meeting brokers’ demands across the industry.

Senior vice president of Liberty Specialty Markets Ben Hissey emphasises the importance of collaborating with brokers to address client challenges.

“That’s why broker-insurer partnerships based on trust and adaptability really matter,” he says.

“Starting from a place of humility is important on the underwriting side. It’s important on the claim side as well”
Kathleen WardenBerkshire Hathaway

Service trumps price

Of the 11 categories, brokers ranked six as the most important:

1.   BDM support
2.   (tie) Premium stability
2.    (tie) Turnaround time – new business
4.   Online platforms and services
5.   Overall service level
6.    Product innovation

“These rankings remind us that there is so much more to our partnerships than price,” says Hissey.

Overall, Liberty Specialty Markets took the silver medal in the 2023 IB Brokers on Insurers awards. The company also won silver medals for premium stability, turnaround times – claims, and turnaround times – new business and took gold for product innovation.

“It’s about flexibility, understanding and the ability to listen to what clients need so we can work together to build an insurance solution that delivers mutual advantage,” adds Hissey.

Kathleen Warden, head of customer and broker engagement for Berkshire Hathaway, agrees. She sees a strong emphasis on service in these results.

“When you look at where the focus is – BDM support, turnaround time, platforms and services and service levels – all are related to ‘Can I get this job done? Can I get the engagement that I need?,’” she says.

Berkshire Hathaway won bronze for overall service levels and turnaround times – new business as well as BDM support, which Warden thinks is interesting.

“We don’t have a single BDM working for us,” she admits. “Our underwriters are out in the market working to represent the company as a whole. They must be doing a brilliant job because people think we have great support without having a single BDM.”

“Broker-insurer partnerships based on trust and adaptability really matter”
Ben HisseyLiberty Specialty Markets

What do brokers think of the top three categories?

During the survey, brokers were invited to comment on the following areas regarding the best insurance companies in Australia:

BDM support

Sixty-five percent of brokers said BDM support had worsened, and 35% said it had improved over the past 12 months.

Broker feedback:

“I don’t even know who our BDMs are most of the time. And what they can actually do for us is nothing apart from pass queries on to other people.”
“It has improved. The BDMs are more out meeting brokers and are more proactively participating in negotiations with underwriters.”

Premium stability

Seventy-three percent of brokers said premium stability had worsened, and 27% said it had improved over the past 12 months.

Broker feedback:

“Premiums continue to be on the rise, irrespective of how clean a risk is. Insurers need to consider client loyalty.”
“We are seeing more stable and manageable increases at renewal; there are not too many large scares compared to the previous 12-month period.”

Turnaround time – new business

Seventy-one percent of brokers said turnaround times for new business had worsened, and 29% said they had improved over the past 12 months.

Broker feedback:

“Due to everyone working from home, the care factor is no longer there. Plus, staff are stretched to capacity. More staff would help.”
“A lot of insurers or agencies will respond to quotes within a day or two, with terms following fairly quickly once all information is received.”

Hissey says that Liberty Specialty Market’s challenge has been going out of its way to build strong relationships.

“At Liberty, we want to be a long-term partner. We take pride in offering a consistent product appetite with relevant and responsive claims and engineering outcomes. As other insurers start to return to markets they previously pulled out of, it can bring short-term capacity, and reminding brokers of the value we offer as a long-term insurance partner is critical.”

What distinguishes the top insurers in the marketplace?

What do the winners think differentiates them from their peers?

“At Liberty, our team is recognised for the high level of product expertise we bring to the market, along with fully empowered underwriting and claims teams,” says Hissey. “Service and turnaround times are key, be that for the largest and most complex insurance programs in the region right through to meeting the needs of local ‘mum and dad’ horticultural businesses who equally rely on our coverage.”

Warden says excellence at Berkshire Hathaway boils down to three elements: humility, service and solutions.

“That’s how we orient ourselves,” she explains. “So, when we talk about humility, we start from a place of understanding that brokers and customers have a choice, right? They do not have to choose us. They don’t have to introduce you. Brokers don’t have to introduce us to their customers, buy a policy with us or submit a vote.

“We have to always remember that anytime they choose us, we need to be grateful for it and not start to take that for granted. So, starting from a place of humility is important on the underwriting side. It’s important on the claim side as well.”

The key for Berkshire Hathaway is to think about the process from various perspectives.

“We acknowledge the claim early. We acknowledge the submission early and help the broker and customer get the job done right when they’re in the insurance process. There’s something there that they’ve got to get done. There’s been a focus on some of the more simple, simpler parts of service, like answering the phone and returning a call. And I think it’s funny to get that feedback because you would just take that as a given.

“Everything impacts our industry from either a claim or underwriting point of view. Every new technology, every new idea, we have to figure it out and accept the intellectual challenge when someone is asking for something that’s other than the norm.”

Best Insurance Companies in Australia |
Brokers on Insurers 2023