When torrential rain, lightning and thunderstorms threw Channel 10’s Big Brother into chaos last November, or when Ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred forced the Russell Crowe production Bear Country to halt filming on the Gold Coast and across South East Queensland earlier that year, immediate costs were measured in idle crew, unusable locations and blown schedules. For brokers, events like these can trigger multiple covers simultaneously: Pluvious/weather cover, extra expense cover and production property cover — all potentially responding at once, with a contingency section also in play on more complex shoots.
The aggregation risk is real: a single storm system can hit multiple productions across the same region simultaneously. During the 2015 Gold Coast shoot for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, production was already disrupted by bad weather when star Johnny Depp injured his hand and left for the US, halting the entire shoot — a reminder that cast insurance can converge with weather and extra expense claims in an instant.
So for brokers placing Australian production business, understanding how these covers interact — and whether a carrier can make rapid mid-shoot decisions without offshore referral — is not a secondary consideration. It is central to the value of the placement. And until recently, brokers had precious little choice about who to place that business with.
Meanwhile, Australia’s screen industry is writing its biggest numbers ever. Drama production expenditure hit a record $2.7 billion in 2024/25, with $1.3 billion spent on international features including local shoots by major streaming platforms that continue to flood the production pipeline with new commissions. A further sign of this vibrant creative economy is the opening in January of Perth Film Studios, described as a world-class, $233.5 million facility.
However, the insurance market servicing this boom was moving in the other direction. In recent years, what was a field of three to four local underwriting options for the industry consolidated to effectively one — leaving brokers negotiating tighter terms, absorbing higher fees and carrying a level of market concentration with uncomfortable historical echoes.
One sign of the industry’s struggles came during the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-era Temporary Interruption Fund (TIF), set up precisely because interruption cover had become inaccessible, ultimately supported 114 productions with combined budgets of nearly $970 million.
However, in April, a big insurer entered the frame. After two years of planning and development, HDI Global (HDI) launched its film production insurance package in Australia. The decision, said Chris Milne, HDI’s underwriting manager for contingency and entertainment, was driven by his firm’s strategic ambition to operate as a fully-fledged entertainment insurer across all products in Australia, much like it already does in some other markets.
There’s little doubt from brokers and their struggling creative clients that the local entertainment insurance sector is ripe for disruption and competition. Milne said that following the consolidation of the two main film insurers, brokers told HDI that choice, flexibility and underwriting conditions have all suffered.
Milne was careful to frame the move not as opportunism but as the culmination of deliberate preparation.
“The Australian production package began as a project nearly two years ago and we have spent time engaging with the market to establish the most appropriate form of distribution to be the most effective partner we can for our brokers,” he said. “Ultimately, across all lines of our business, we note that underwriting results are better where we write in-branch rather than providing capital to others and so it was naturally an easy decision to follow this model and provide brokers with a direct local insurer with global capabilities.”
This direct insurer model is central to HDI’s pitch and Milne said the difference is tangible for brokers.
“The direct insurer model differs significantly from an MGA structure,” he said. “There are very obvious transactional efficiencies that can have immediate benefit to both broker and the end insured — not having underwriting fees, for example, is one example where there can be an immediate reduction in overall insurance costs.”
For larger or multi-territory shoots, HDI’s in-house capabilities across aviation, marine, motor, and accident and health allow brokers, said Milne, to consolidate what would otherwise be a fragmented placement with a single carrier.
The underwriting leader said his firm has a reputation for being more flexible and adaptable on coverage than other insurers in the market, with underwriters empowered to make decisions on the spot. It is a philosophy that matters in a class where, as the examples above show, multiple covers can be triggered simultaneously and every hour of delay carries a real cost.
The proof of HDI’s commitment, Milne argued, is in its track record. The company has grown from near-nothing in Australia fifteen years ago to writing close to $1.5 billion in annual premium — not by entering markets opportunistically, but by staying in them. Film production, he adds, doesn’t need to stand alone; it forms part of a broader strategy for growth in the Sport & Entertainment segment, with HDI already writing a large global pool of entertainment business that provides the premium foundation to weather tougher market cycles.
“I would stress that this isn’t an opportunistic play, but a deliberate, strategic decision to continue to grow and evolve based on both our underwriting appetite and the wants and needs of our already very supportive broker base,” he said.
