The National Insurance Brokers Association (NIBA) has welcomed the federal government's consumer protection package, saying the decision to confine a proposed ban on unlicensed real-time contact to superannuation preserves the referral pathways that lead Australian households and small businesses to a professional insurance broker.
Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services the Hon Dr Daniel Mulino MP (pictured) announced the package in an address to the National Press Club in Canberra this week. It responds to the collapses of the Shield and First Guardian Master Funds, which affected almost 12,000 Australians and around $1 billion in retirement savings.
"The government has drawn this reform where the harm actually sits, and that precision is what will make it work," said Richard Klipin, NIBA's CEO. "A measure drafted more widely would have interrupted the ordinary ways Australians find their way to professional advice, at the very moment they are trying to protect themselves. Getting the scope right is the difference between removing predatory conduct and leaving consumers with fewer places to turn."
The conduct the reforms target began with lead generation – consumers contacted after responding to online advertising, then moved through a chain of referrals into products they had not sought. NIBA said it does not defend those practices and supports their removal from the financial system.
The distinction the association is drawing is between that model and the referral routes brokers rely on. Australians commonly reach a broker through an accountant, a mortgage broker, a strata manager or an industry association. NIBA said those pathways involve no cold contact, no unlicensed sales process and no movement of retirement savings.
But not every measure in the package stops at superannuation. Several apply across financial products, including changes to the anti-hawking exemption and a new obligation on licensees to oversee lead generation arrangements. Under the existing regime, set out in the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's (ASIC's) hawking prohibition, a person must not offer a financial product to a retail client in the course of or because of unsolicited, real-time contact, with consent required to be positive, voluntary and clear.
The government has signalled it will strengthen consent requirements, narrow the adviser exemption to existing clients and increase penalties for breaches.
The unresolved question for broking businesses is the scope of targeted exemptions, on which the government has flagged further consultation. NIBA said it will engage in that process with a focus on ensuring established group insurance and referral arrangements continue to operate.
That places two operational questions in front of licensees before any legislation is drafted: whether existing referral agreements sit inside or outside a tightened anti-hawking exemption, and what "reasonable steps" oversight of a lead generation arrangement will require in practice.
The association has argued consistently that advice-regime settings designed for investment products fit general insurance distribution poorly, a theme running through NIBA's push for simpler regulation across general insurance broking and its 12 recommendations on small business insurance and retail client protections lodged in March 2026. Klipin made a similar case in evidence to the parliamentary committee on small business insurance access.
