Criterion Underwriting has appointed Ian Mundy as chief executive officer, with the Brisbane-based managing general agent (MGA) stating his mandate is to build placement capability for risks that Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA)-authorised insurers do not readily accommodate.
Mundy, whose background spans insurance, reinsurance, and structured risk solutions, has commenced in the role. The press release does not identify whom he succeeds, and Criterion’s website had not been updated to reflect the appointment at the time of publication.
In comments provided with the announcement, Mundy pointed directly to the broker problem his role is designed to address.
“Criterion has built a strong reputation for technical underwriting, responsiveness, and making decisions close to the risk. There is an opportunity to build on that by helping brokers with risks that do not always fit neatly within conventional insurance markets,” he said.
He described the approach as building solutions around the risk rather than fitting it to existing products.
“Our focus will be on understanding the risk, working closely with our broker partners and bringing together the right expertise, structures, and markets to find an appropriate solution,” Mundy said.
Founding director Danny Gluszkiewicz framed the hire as deliberate and signalled what would not change as the business scales.
“We have been very deliberate about where we want to take Criterion, and Ian brings the experience and relationships to help us broaden what we can offer brokers. Just as importantly, he understands the things we do not want to lose as we grow. Technical underwriting, responsiveness, and strong broker relationships will remain central to the business,” he said.
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Criterion operates across Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Its Australian product lines, drawn from the company’s website, cover property, contract works, public and product liability, and contractors’ plant and equipment.
Its financial lines offering includes D&O liability, crime and infidelity, management liability, warranty and indemnity insurance, prospectus liability, and management insurance.
The press release does not name the capacity providers that underwrite Criterion’s existing book. Based on the announcement, the intention is to expand beyond that current structure – developing access to broader markets and alternative placement arrangements for risks, as Insurance Business Australia reads it, that exceed what the domestic market can absorb.
The broker problem Criterion is positioning itself to address is real, though the data that describes it requires careful reading.
APRA’s intermediated general insurance statistics for the six months to June 2026 show $21.87 billion in premiums placed through intermediaries, of which $1.16 billion went to unauthorised foreign insurers (UFIs) – down from $1.3 billion in the same period a year earlier. UFI volumes have fallen across the past two reporting periods, which means they do not straightforwardly support a claim that unmet domestic demand is growing.
UFI placements are also an imperfect proxy for hard-to-place risk generally. The class is dominated by fire and industrial special risks – large commercial property risks requiring significant capacity – rather than the specialist liability or complex casualty placements that brokers most commonly describe as difficult.
The more direct evidence of placement difficulty comes from Insurance Business Australia’s 2026 reporting, which found that mainstream businesses across construction, transport, and logistics are increasingly finding their capacity options restricted or fragmented in the domestic market – a pattern attributed to tighter underwriting standards, not simply market size.
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The MGA model gives operators like Criterion flexibility that APRA-authorised insurers do not have. Without being bound to a single insurer’s appetite, an MGA can access multiple capacity providers, draw on international markets, and build placements that a standard product cannot cover.
Guy Carpenter’s Steve Warwick, head of GC Access for Asia Pacific, noted in a 2026 interview on the company’s website that Australia and New Zealand are already the most developed MGA markets in the region – and that the channel has room to grow further.
“When you think of the size of the Asia-Pacific insurance premium pool, there’s a lot of headroom for the MGA market. And it’s not going to just take business from where it’s currently underwritten; it will generate business with talent and technology,” Warwick said.
For brokers managing non-standard or complex portfolios, the Criterion appointment is worth monitoring. The commercial test will be which specific risk classes Mundy targets and whether the market access he builds delivers placements that brokers cannot currently complete domestically.
