For brokers, the coming hours are a final countdown. The long consultation period to draft a revised Insurance Brokers Code of Practice (the Code) ends COB today, Friday August 7. The National Insurance Brokers Association (NIBA) is targeting January 1 2027 as the launch date for the Code’s final version.
"We’ve had strong engagement - a meaningful number of submissions and we’re still receiving them ahead of Friday’s close,” said NIBA CEO Richard Klipin (pictured). Klipin told IB he’s not expecting inputs in these final hours to result in major changes. A revised Code was released last month after two rounds of member and stakeholder input.
“The architecture is mostly settled; the detail is what we're still working through,” he said.
But the devil can be in the detail and for some, the devil is not yet fully exorcised from this Code. According to consumer groups, some strata stakeholders and industry consultant John Trowbridge, serious issues remain around the disclosure of fees and conflicts of interest.
In the final hours before the door shuts on public and member inputs, the NIBA CEO defended the position he argued in a column the association published this week.
“Disclosure only works if it's meaningful,” said Klipin to IB. “Blanket disclosure risks becoming noise.”
He said the new Code targets automatic disclosure in strata. That's where the transparency gap is greatest, he said, because the end client often has no direct relationship with the broker.
Klipin’s defence of where the Code draws its boundaries rests on a three-layer architecture he explained in his column. A broker’s obligations begin with the law, not the Code: Every member operates under an Australian Financial Services Licence (AFSL). The duty under section 912A of the Corporations Act to act efficiently, honestly and fairly already covers everything the Code describes. The Code sits above that. Individual firms, many with their own codes, sit above both.
“The Code sets what is professional," said Klipin. "The firm decides how it competes.”
A Code that reaches into that third layer and prescribes one way of doing business flattens the profession rather than lifting it, Klipin wrote. Across more than 14,000 brokers - from multinationals whose compliance teams outnumber most member firms to sole practitioners who are the entire business - he said a code must mean the same thing to all of them.
The cost argument follows. Every obligation a code adds is one somebody administers, documents, trains for and pays for. Where that buys a better client outcome, Klipin said the draft asks the profession to pay it. Where it does not, the client funds a process that protects nobody - a line likely aimed at the fee transparency case Trowbridge and consumer advocates have pressed.
The column leans on two sets of numbers. NIBA’s Complexity to Clarity research, which surveyed advised clients rather than consumers who buy direct, found 84% trust their broker to act in their best interest and 95% consider their broker essential at claim time. Klipin also cites the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) Datacube, which he said shows broker complaints sitting below 1 per cent in 2025–26.
From that base, he makes the claim critics are most likely to contest.
“The argument for expansion was made in principle rather than from demonstrated client harm," said Klipin.
NIBA’s position is that without evidence of harm, extra obligations transfer cost to clients without buying them protection. The counter-argument is that low complaint volumes measure what clients know to complain about, not what they were never told – which is a case for disclosure by default rather than on request.
Several obligations are operational rather than philosophical, and brokers will feel those first. Dollar disclosure on request is restored for any client - retail, wholesale, strata or a business of any size - with no thresholds or product carve-outs. Automatic remuneration disclosure extends to all strata insurance, residential and commercial, disclosed to the owners corporation whether or not it is a retail client. A 28-day pre-renewal contact commitment gives clients a defined window to review cover, record-keeping moves from good practice to a Code obligation, and conflicts of interest obligations are aligned to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) Regulatory Guide 181.
Klipin conceded that no answer on the hardest questions would have satisfied everyone. What he does expect, he wrote, is that the reasoning is visible.
Whether it is visible enough will soon be tested. Once submissions close, the argument stops being about what the Code should say and becomes whether 14,000 brokers can meet it by January 1 2027 - and whether the clients it was written for notice the difference.
