Australia’s insurance market is dealing with conditions that have few recent precedents: climate losses that swung more than 700% in a single year, a technology governance warning from the prudential regulator, tightening compliance obligations for brokers, and premium rates softening while costs keep rising.
The Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance’s (ANZIIF) inaugural International Summit has been built around those conditions. The two-day event is scheduled for February 11 and 12, 2027, at the International Convention Centre Sydney, with more than 900 delegates and 60 marketplace exhibitors expected.
The Summit runs four concurrent content streams:
Delegates can move between streams based on what is most relevant to their role.
For brokers, each stream maps to conditions they are already managing – placement difficulty in high-risk regions, AI spreading through carrier claims operations, tightening disclosure requirements, and the unpredictability of the catastrophe environment.
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The scale of Australia’s 2025 catastrophe losses is the backdrop to the Resilience and Macro streams. The Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) confirmed on April 21, 2026, that extreme weather generated $4.8 billion in insured losses in 2025 – up 727% on the prior year – with more than $4.1 billion of that originating from Queensland alone. Insurers handled 294,000 claims from declared events, almost six times the prior year’s count, with average costs per claim rising 39% to $16,471. Total economic costs, including uninsured losses, were estimated at over $8.6 billion.
For comparison, insured losses from extreme weather totalled $585 million in 2024 and $2.35 billion in 2023.
One of the Summit’s keynote speakers has put figures like these in direct context. Dr Tom Mortlock, Aon’s head of climate analytics for Asia-Pacific, said in a March 2026 Aon media release: “Insurance affordability and access remain important issues in Australia. Even in a softer market, where risk is not well differentiated, communities and businesses can still face a widening gap between economic losses and what is actually insured due to a combination of both climate and non-climate factors.”
For brokers placing cover in flood-prone or storm-exposed regions, that gap has direct consequences for client conversations about coverage adequacy.
The Technology stream carries specific weight for intermediaries. Gallagher Bassett’s The Carrier Perspective: 2026 Claims Insights found that 74% of Australian insurers were using generative AI in claims resolution – above the global average of 68%. The same report identified regulatory and compliance risk as the leading barrier to further AI integration among local carriers.
That concern has regulatory backing. On April 30, 2026, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) issued a letter to all regulated entities warning that governance, risk management, assurance, and operational resilience practices are not keeping pace with AI adoption across banks, insurers, and superannuation trustees. The letter followed a targeted supervisory review conducted in late 2025, which identified boards overrelying on vendor presentations without independent scrutiny, weak post-deployment monitoring, and assurance frameworks too fragmented across cybersecurity, operational resilience, and privacy to be effective.
For brokers, the implications are practical. When an AI-assisted carrier decision leads to a claim denial, a delay, or an inaccurate outcome, clients look to their broker. The National Insurance Brokers Association’s (NIBA) October 2025 report, Ready or Reacting? Shaping the Future of the Insurance Broking Profession, found that while 83% of brokers expect technology and automation to have significant impact by 2035, only 61% feel prepared – a 22-percentage-point gap. On regulation, 86% expect increased obligations by 2035, while just 62% say their business is currently ready.
ANZIIF CEO Katrina Shanks said the cross-sector speaker lineup was a deliberate design choice. “We wanted a program that looks outward, not just inward. Economic shifts, geopolitics, workforce change, and integrity are all reshaping insurance, whether we engage with them or not. We built the Summit to bring those voices onto one stage alongside insurance leaders, so the industry can understand these forces and get ahead of them,” Shanks said.
Senior insurance figures on the program include Munich Re managing director Scott Hawkins, Sedgwick Australia CEO Simon Kay, and Mortlock. Beyond insurance, the agenda draws in ANZ chief economist Richard Yetsenga, geopolitics analyst Dr Merriden Varrall of Vantage Geopol, Future Skills Organisation CEO Patrick Kidd, and Pierre Skorich of the National Anti-Corruption Commission Taskforce.
The integrity focus is timely for brokers. The Insurance Brokers Code Compliance Committee’s (IBCCC) 2024 Annual Data Report recorded remuneration disclosure breaches rising from 42 in 2023 to 334 in 2024 – the first full year of reporting under section 6.1 of the Insurance Brokers Code of Practice.
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Deloitte’s Insurance Predictions 2026 identifies geopolitical shifts, rapid technological change, climate pressures, and regulatory change as the defining forces shaping how Australian insurers operate in 2026. As premium rate increases soften and margins tighten, boards and executives face difficult trade-offs around where to invest and how quickly to move.
KPMG’s General Insurance Insights 2026, drawing on APRA data to December 31, 2025, found that second-half insurer profits were dampened by medium-sized catastrophes that did not activate reinsurance protections. Rate increases continue to reflect worsening disaster risk and persistent claims inflation.
Those conditions – rising loss costs, AI governance obligations, softening rates, and disclosure pressure – are what the Summit program has been structured to address.
ANZIIF was established in 1884 and connects more than 17,000 insurance and finance professionals across the Asia-Pacific region.
