Specialist Risk Group (SRG) has launched a structured program to bring professionals from consulting, legal, audit, and accounting into broking roles in Melbourne and Sydney, targeting a talent pool the broader industry has largely overlooked.
SRG, the international insurance intermediary backed by Warburg Pincus and Temasek, entered the Australian market in February 2026, opening offices in Sydney and Melbourne with an initial focus on mid-market clients and specialist lines including entertainment, media, and sport. Seven months on, the group has launched its Accelerated Broking Program – a 12-week structured pathway for professionals from consulting, legal, audit, and accounting backgrounds to move into broking roles, with no prior insurance experience required. The program is open now in Melbourne and Sydney, targeting candidates with one to four years of experience in those fields. It is SRG’s first formal talent initiative in Australia since its market entry.
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As ongoing consolidation in the broking sector sees firms acquire teams to secure capability and client relationships, according to the National Insurance Brokers Association’s (NIBA) June 2026 research report Data to Direction: Insights from the General Insurance Broking Profession, SRG is targeting talent from adjacent professional services disciplines, including consulting, legal, audit, and accounting. The workforce conditions underpinning that decision are documented. Brokers aged 18 to 29 make up just 11% of Australia’s general insurance broking workforce – the same proportion as those aged 60 and over – with a median broker age of 44. The report links the low share of early-career brokers to limited or delayed entry pathways.
Meanwhile, talent attraction and retention ranked third among Australian insurers’ business challenges in 2026, with more than three-quarters reporting difficulty finding qualified candidates over the previous 12 months. Sixty-eight percent said they were looking to increase investment in training and development, up from 48% in 2025, according to Gallagher Bassett’s The Carrier Perspective: 2026 Claims Insights. For a business seven months into its Australian build, the standard response – poaching experienced brokers or running a graduate program – carries a specific cost in that environment. SRG’s program bypasses both approaches.
Laurence Basell, managing director at SRG Australia, said client expectations are shaping the firm’s criteria for new hires. “The industry has spent years competing for the same experienced brokers. The market is shifting, though, and clients increasingly want someone who understands their business commercially, not just their policy wording. That raises the bar on the skills a broker needs, which is exactly why bringing in new talent from different backgrounds is so critical. People from consulting, legal, audit, and accounting already think that way, and this program gives them the technical grounding to apply it in broking,” Basell said. That rationale has external support at the hiring-methodology level. Research cited by ADP in its 2025 HR Trends material found that 90% of organisations using skills-based hiring reported reducing mis-hires, while 94% agreed that skills-based hiring was more predictive of on-the-job success than résumés.
Participants spend the first eight weeks studying toward the ANZIIF Tier 1 qualification alongside induction, systems training, and broker shadowing. From week nine, they move into live client work – drafting client communications, preparing pitches, and contributing to renewal strategy under a dedicated mentor broker. The program closes with a case study presented to SRG’s leadership team, followed by a formal transition into a broking role.
Iona Paterson, head of HR at SRG Australia, said the structure is built around the professional standing of its target cohort, not around a conventional entry-level onboarding model. “This is not a graduate scheme with a new label. We are recruiting people who have already proven themselves somewhere demanding, and the program is built around that: real client work from week nine, a mentor accountable for their progress, and a clear view of the career beyond week twelve,” Paterson said. SRG said participants who complete the program gain access to its international network spanning Australia, Singapore, Europe, and the UK, including exposure to global carriers and complex risk placement – positioning the program as an entry point into an international platform rather than a standalone local role.
SRG’s approach is one of several responses visible across the Australian broking market to the same underlying conditions. Lockton Pacific CEO Marcus Pearson stated in March 2026 that the firm intends to grow its Australian workforce by 20% through recruitment – framing it not as a target but as a requirement to sustain its mid-teen to 20% organic growth ambition. Steadfast Group has opened applications for its 2026 graduate program, now in its eighth year, running for 12 months across four three-month rotations in underwriting, broking support, operations, and digital transformation. NIBA is introducing a dedicated young professionals track at its October 2026 convention – the first time in the event’s history that a stream has been built specifically for early-career brokers. Each of those responses draws from established talent pools – graduates, internal pipelines, or experienced hires. What distinguishes SRG’s program is the specific cohort it targets: working professionals with one to four years of experience in disciplines where analytical and commercial skills are core, recruited before they have any insurance background.
Whether professionals from consulting, legal, and accounting firms can build the technical depth and market relationships that complex commercial broking requires at the level clients expect is a question SRG’s early cohorts will begin to answer. The program has just launched, and no outcome data exists yet. The Future Skills Organisation’s Workforce Plan 2025 projects that by 2030, attrition will impact over 613,000 roles across Australia’s finance, technology, and business sectors, outpacing new supply from education, migration, and job transitions. Against that projection, the structural case for testing new recruitment models is supported by multiple independent sources – and the results of this one will be worth watching.
