Nominations for the Insurance Business Awards 2027 close on November 20, leaving insurance professionals across Australia 10 days to put forward a colleague, a team or themselves. Any individual or company working in the local industry can enter for free and a nomination can be lodged on someone else's behalf.
Winners will be named at a black-tie gala dinner at the Fullerton Hotel Sydney on May 28, with music and entertainment through the evening. The ninth annual awards, held in Sydney earlier this year, were a sold-out night across 22 categories at the 2026 ceremony.
Daniel Lukich (pictured), sales and strategic relationship manager at motor accident management firm AAMC, which returns as Event Partner for 2027. He said the programme earns its place by surfacing work that the working week tends to bury.
“The Insurance Business Awards give us the opportunity to recognise the people and teams whose contribution can get lost in the demands of day-to-day business," said Lukich. "They also give the industry examples of great work to learn from, encouraging us all to keep improving how we support customers and our communities."
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His second point, about the industry learning from itself, is probably the one most easily lost in a hard year. Rising premiums, natural catastrophe exposure and sustained cost pressure have made the job tougher across broking, underwriting and claims, which is a good argument for documenting who is handling it well.
The 22 categories cover brokers, underwriters, insurers, business development managers (BDMs), authorised representatives (ARs), claims teams and insurtechs, alongside honours for young achievers, lifetime achievers, women of distinction, chief executives and excellence in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
Winners have ranged from large national insurers to small brokerages built around a single sector, which organisers put forward as evidence that scale is not what is being tested. HDI Global SE, Australia took Insurer of the Year at the 2026 awards, while Insurance Advisernet won the authorised representative network category in the same year.
AAMC is again backing the claims team category, as it has in previous years. Asked why claims, Lukich pointed to the moment a policy stops being a document.
“Claims is where the insurance promise becomes real, and the teams delivering it deserve recognition for the judgment, empathy and resilience their work demands," he said. "At AAMC, we work alongside claims professionals every day and see the difference a committed team makes in helping customers recover and move forward – that's why we're proud to support this award again."
The field the category attracts bears that out. NTI won the AAMC Claims Team of the Year prize at the 2025 Insurance Business Australia Awards, with excellence awardees including Allianz Australia's general insurance claims team, Arch Insurance, AXA XL, CHU Underwriting Agencies and Underwriting Agencies of Australia (UAA). National carriers and specialist agencies were judged against the same criteria.
Lukich has used AAMC's vantage point to argue publicly for change in the way intermediated motor claims are handled, including after a fact-finding trip to London reported in Insurance Business coverage of intermediated motor claims lessons from the UK. Describing how British brokers and insurers channel work through established repairer networks, he said: “It's a fundamental cultural shift from policing to partnering.”
That is the kind of detail a strong claims submission tends to carry: a named change in process and what it altered for the customer at the other end of it.
Nominations are first shortlisted by the Insurance Business awards team, which compiles the strongest candidates in each category. Those Excellence Awardees are published online on February 22.
Shortlisted submissions then go to an independent panel of senior industry figures drawn from insurance businesses, associations and peak bodies. Each entry is scored against set criteria, with the process structured to keep scoring impartial and consistent across categories. Scores are aggregated to produce a single winner in each category, revealed on the night of May 28.
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The category list also works as a plain description of the industry for anyone outside it. Business development manager, authorised representative, loss assessor: the titles mean little to the general public and the awards set out what each of those roles contributes. The awards are also a big chance for the whole industry to celebrate and have fun.
Key Media thanks Event Partner AAMC, Gold Award Partner Grappler.io and all other sponsors for their support of the 2027 awards.
