Any client of an Australian insurance broker will be able to ask what their broker is paid and receive the answer in dollars, under the 2027 Insurance Brokers Code of Practice launched by the National Insurance Brokers Association (NIBA) at its Convention on the Gold Coast today.
The Code takes effect on January 1 2027. It is written in plain English and addressed directly to clients, setting out what each one can expect from their broker from the first conversation through to a claim.
"No single reform defines this Code. Its strength lies in how its obligations work together to describe what clients should expect from a professional insurance broker, from the first conversation through to a claim," said NIBA president Nick Cook (pictured).
The Code grows from 12 sections to 14. Conflicts of interest now have a section of their own, consolidating obligations that were spread across four sections of the 2022 Code, and a new section sets out how client records are kept.
The remuneration obligation applies regardless of the size of a client's business or the type of policy held. The minimum notice period before a policy renews doubles from 14 days to 28. A client going through a difficult time can, with their consent, have that recorded once so they do not have to explain it again. After a declared catastrophe, brokers must contact affected clients as soon as they reasonably can and offer to help them lodge claims.
Several of those obligations were visible in the July 2026 draft, which NIBA confirmed would be released in final form at a sold-out Convention with more than 1,000 delegates registered.
NIBA built the Code in three stages: an independent review, followed by two rounds of its own consultation. The review began in late 2024 with the appointment of an independent reviewer and concluded with two rounds of public consultation in 2026, guided by five principles – transparency, modernisation, accessibility, flexibility and efficiency.
Fifty-one written submissions were received. More than 300 pieces of feedback on the draft were each mapped to the clause they addressed and given a recorded decision. Where views diverged, the NIBA board made the call. A consultation report released alongside the Code sets out what was heard in each round.
That process was not uncontested. The consultation period that closed in August 2026 drew sustained argument over fee disclosure and the dispute over remuneration disclosure put mandatory regulation back on the tabl in the weeks before launch.
"We have set out our reasoning on the contested calls, including the ones some stakeholders will still disagree with. A profession that asks clients to trust its standards should be willing to show how it set them," said chair of the Code Review Committee Di Phelan.
Obligations that require new systems, processes or training must be met in full within 12 months of the Code taking effect. NIBA will support Code Subscribers with a map from the 2022 Code to the 2027 Code and section-by-section implementation guidance, and will publish a plain-English guide for clients. Training will run across the membership.
"A Code proves its worth at the moments clients are most exposed: when a premium jumps, when a claim follows a disaster, when life gets hard. That is where this Code does its work, and it is written so clients can read it and hold their broker to it," said NIBA chief executive officer Richard Klipin.
NIBA represents approximately 380 member firms and more than 14,000 individual brokers. Brokers first committed to a Code of Practice in 1992, and NIBA says the 2027 Code will guide the profession through to its 50th anniversary in 2032.
