Achmea Farm Insurance has opened a permanent office in Tamworth, New South Wales, placing a direct insurer’s operation in a regional centre already contested by specialist agricultural brokers.
The office opened on September 4, 2026, with around 50 clients, farmers, and industry stakeholders in attendance. Speakers included CEO Emma Thomas (pictured third from the left), Angus Australia CEO Scott Wright (pictured left), and The Hon. Kevin Anderson MP (pictured right), Member for Tamworth.
The announcement is straightforward. The market context surrounding it is not.
Read next: Achmea urges farmers to brace for bushfires
Australian agricultural insurance has seen more structural change in the past 14 months than in the years prior. On July 1, 2025, both CGU and NRMA ceased selling farm insurance policies – including hobby farm and rural farm products – referring new customers to WFI. IAG’s intermediated business, which includes CGU and WFI, then announced an exclusive partnership with specialist agricultural agency Ag Guard in October 2025, with the arrangement commencing in June 2026.
Achmea is moving in the opposite direction – no brokers, permanent regional staff, specialists on farm.
Achmea Farm Insurance has operated as a direct agricultural insurer since entering Australia in 2013. The Tamworth office is not a client-facing branch. It brings together underwriting, client experience, policy support, and growth staff alongside Farm Insurance Specialists who conduct on-farm visits across the surrounding district.
General manager Marnie Te Aho, who is based in Tamworth, described the model: “Our local Farm Insurance Specialists visit clients on farm across Tamworth and surrounds, supported by people working in underwriting, client experience, policy support, and growth. It means we can support local jobs, build careers in agricultural insurance, and contribute to agriculture as Achmea grows."
CEO Emma Thomas said the office reflects the company’s broader operating approach. “Being present, listening, and standing alongside our clients where they live and work is incredibly important to us, and there is no better place to reinforce that commitment than here in Tamworth,” she said.
Tamworth serves as the agricultural processing hub for the North West Slopes of NSW – home to abattoirs, poultry processing facilities, and a large wheat mill, according to Regional Development Australia Northern Inland.
Total agricultural output in the Tamworth Regional Council area reached $305 million in 2020/21, with livestock slaughtering accounting for 75.4% of that figure, per Australian Bureau of Statistics data.
The broader New England North West region produces around a fifth of NSW’s total agricultural output and is home to 16% of the state’s farm businesses, according to the NSW government’s New England North West Regional Plan 2041.
It is also a market where specialist brokers have long been active. Gallagher’s AgriRisk – which holds one of the largest portfolios of broker-managed crop and livestock insurance in Australia – has maintained a Tamworth presence since before its acquisition by Gallagher in 2019. Achmea and AgriRisk now operate in the same town, competing for the same clients through fundamentally different distribution models.
Intermediaries account for 50% of gross written premium placed with Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA)-authorised general insurers, according to APRA’s intermediated general insurance statistics for the six months ending June 2025 – a figure consistent across recent reporting periods. Gallagher’s own website notes the Australian agricultural insurance market is served by “only a small number of insurers offering a limited range of products,” framing broker expertise as essential to navigate it.
The National Insurance Brokers Association of Australia’s (NIBA) 2025 National Broker of the Year, Caleb Richards – practice leader agriculture at Gallagher’s AgriRisk, based in Wagga Wagga – addressed the dynamic at a NIBA forum in Orange, NSW, in September 2026: “Farming operations are scaling up and adopting new technology faster than ever, and the risk on farm is evolving right alongside it. Brokers need direct access to that expertise, on the ground where clients are, not from a distance.”
That argument – specialist knowledge, physical presence, direct client access – is the same one Achmea is making. The difference is that Achmea makes it without a broker in the chain.
Australian agriculture employs approximately 315,600 people, contributes 2.4% of GDP, and generated $71.5 billion in export value in 2023-24, according to ABARES’s Snapshot of Australian Agriculture 2025. Whether brokers writing farm business in regional NSW are actively defending that client base – or ceding it by default – is a question Achmea’s expansion puts on the table.
The opening included the handover of a glass jar to the Tamworth team, a reference to Achmea’s founding in 1811, when 39 Dutch farmers in the village of Achlum pooled money into a jar to collectively insure against loss. The jar held locally sourced items representing the region’s agricultural industries: cropping, wool, cotton, eggs, and beef.
The event also marked Achmea’s ongoing partnership with Angus Australia, running since 2019, which has supported close to 100 participants in the GenAngus Future Leaders Program for emerging beef industry leaders.
The office runs on 100% accredited GreenPower electricity, uses sustainable materials, and Achmea supports Land Life’s Moolagundi restoration project west of Tamworth.
