Ask Alison Gemmell whose job it is to fix Australia's insurance affordability problem and she doesn't need long to think about it.
"The entire industry's," she says.
Gemmell, a client leader at Aon, was named Queensland Broker of the Year at the NIBA gala lunch in Brisbane in July, part of a second straight state double for Aon. A few days earlier in Perth, Brooke Tarr, a director and shareholder at KBI who leads its mining and resources team in Western Australia, took the WA title. Both are now in the running for the national award, which the National Insurance Brokers Association will hand out at its convention gala dinner on the Gold Coast on Tuesday 20 October.
Speaking to Insurance Business, the pair came at the affordability question from opposite ends of the market. One looks up at the lawmakers; the other looks down the mine shaft. They ended up in much the same place: nobody gets to sit this one out.
For Gemmell, a lot of premium pressure starts well away from the underwriting room.
"Something that I'm very passionate about is when legislation and regulation interplay with the markets and insurance affordability," she said. Brokers needed to keep a close eye on that, she argued, and it was where NIBA's advocacy mattered most: when governments change the law in ways that ripple through to what the market will offer, and at what price.
The aim, she said, was "making sure that the consequences of legislation don't have unintended consequences on market availability, which of course then has a consequence on affordability."
She gave two examples. The first is the line the law draws between retail and wholesale clients. Under section 761G(5) of the Corporations Act, a small business only counts as a retail client when it buys products on a prescribed list.
Commercial covers such as public liability, professional indemnity, cyber and business interruption sit outside it, which means small business buyers miss out on protections that apply to someone buying home or motor cover. NIBA asked a parliamentary committee in March to review that list, one of 12 recommendations it put forward. The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman has made a similar point about the narrow product list in its submission on the broker code.
Widen the retail net and more businesses will get more protection. Every new obligation also carries a compliance cost, though, and someone ends up paying it. That is the kind of trade-off Gemmell wants brokers watching.
Read next: Small businesses left exposed as insurance complexity mounts - NIBA
Her second example is a big one in her home state: the government-backed cyclone reinsurance pool, which began in July 2022.
The early numbers have been kind to it. According to the Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation's May 2026 premium assessment, average premiums for medium to high cyclone risk policies fell by between 17% and 37% from October 2022 to January 2026. The ACCC's fifth and final monitoring report found home premiums in higher-risk areas dropped 14% and small business premiums 31% within two years of insurers joining, but also that the pool directly helps only around 2% of policies nationally, with premiums elsewhere still climbing.
The rules keep shifting. ARPC opened consultation on 1 October on draft pricing that would trim the average pool premium for high-risk properties from $981 to $897 from July 2027, while pushing up rates for lower-risk ones. Meanwhile, the first statutory review of the legislation behind the pool, launched in September 2025, had yet to publish its findings at last report.
Read next: Draft cyclone pool rates cut premiums for high-risk homes but raise them for low-risk ones
Tarr's world looks very different, and she's the first to say so. But her starting point is the client's own operation, not Canberra.
"I think it's really important to educate clients on what they can do on that preventative stage," she said. "The premiums are naturally going to become more affordable if you're actually doing the work to make the business profitable for the insurers at the same time."
That means brokers moving beyond transactional placement into genuine risk advice, she said: working out what clients can do before a loss, then building programs that fit the risk rather than the template, "and then hopefully the premium just follows through."
It's a pitch that suits the moment in resources, given economic conditions. Mining capacity has been loosening, with Willis reporting rates falling and new insurers entering the market. In a softer market, clients that can show underwriters solid risk management are the ones best placed to take advantage. Insurance Business has a primer on how mining cover works for those newer to the class.
Tarr described the arrangement as a three-way deal. "It really comes back to, I think, a tri-party agreement between the client, the broker, and the insurers all working together," she said. If all three are pulling the same way, affordability "shouldn't be too much of an issue".
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Hard and soft markets come and go, Tarr acknowledged. What she values are clients and insurers who treat the relationship as something to sustain. "It's a long-term play," she said.
Her reasoning is simple enough. Build up a healthy pool of premium over time, and a large loss doesn't knock the account sideways. Add the reinsurance sitting behind the insurer, and a big hit "doesn't necessarily flow down to the clients".
There's a neat overlap with Gemmell's point here. The cyclone pool is, in effect, the same idea scaled up by government: pool the premium, put a backstop behind it, and stop one catastrophe from repricing an entire region. It has been tested already. Cyclone Alfred generated $1.335bn in net incurred losses within the pool, its biggest single event to date.
Read next: Car insurance premiums: why motor claims costs keep climbing in Australia
Gemmell and Tarr will line up against the state winners from NSW/ACT, Victoria/Tasmania and South Australia/Northern Territory when the national Broker of the Year is announced at the NIBA Convention at RACV Royal Pines. This year's event, running under a "Future Ready" banner, also includes NIBA's first dedicated program for early-career brokers.
Whoever takes the trophy, both brokers left the same message for the room: affordability isn't something brokers can hand off to insurers or governments and wait for. It gets fixed, if it gets fixed at all, one law, one risk survey and one renewal at a time.
