Arranging insurance for Indigenous communities starts with lessons no product training covers and Peter Newbound (pictured), an independent insurance professional and former principal of WA Insurance Brokers, is the first to say he had everything to learn. A non-Indigenous broker who came to the work two decades ago through a Broome business partner, he spent 20 years being educated by the Aboriginal corporations and communities of the Kimberley and Pilbara - starting with the dress code. Around Fitzroy Crossing, where he once recorded 47 degrees in the shade, "Kimberley formal" sensibly meant polo shirts, not formal business attire.
"You never rock up in a suit," said Newbound to Insurance Business.
Some lessons were harder won and Newbound is candid that the errors were his. Early on, he ran a risk management seminar on workers' compensation laws for 20 to 30 community representatives and watched people begin to leave after half an hour. His first instinct was to question the audience; the honest answer, he realised, was to question his format. The lecture-style session he had imported from the city gave way to conversations over a barbecue. The discussion that followed, he said, was richer than anything the seminar had produced. The communities had not failed to engage with him; he had failed to engage with them.
"They were a little apprehensive to start, but once they realised you're on their side, they'd open up," he said. It was an apprehension he regarded as entirely reasonable given how often remote communities have been sold to and moved on from.
Newbound's answer was an annual circuit of client communities - some as remote as the Canning Stock Route - sitting down with the elders who govern community boards and inspecting every risk in person. The visits caught what phone renewals never would: New buildings nobody had thought to declare, plans for the coming year with insurance implications and maintenance issues that were not insurance problems at all.
That last distinction produced hard, respectful conversations. When one corporation's chief executive proposed buying a dilapidated building, Newbound walked through it with her and gave the advice a client is owed: Cover could be arranged but a claim would likely not be paid. She had her own plans regardless - the building was to be demolished - but the honesty, he said, is what the relationship was built on.
"Those conversations can't happen over the phone," he said.
Clients preferred to raise claims the same way: Face to face, on their timetable, sometimes on his next visit. Knowing the local contractors and authorities meant Newbound could manage a claim on the ground, gathering reports and quotes himself and guiding the client through each step, rather than simply lodging it with the insurer and leaving the community to navigate the rest. This sort of broker service goes well beyond the transparency now expected under the Australian Securities and Investments Commission's (ASIC) informed consent obligations for brokers.
Another big lesson for Newbound and any broker taking on work with Indigenous clients is appreciating how understanding culture is part of the risk assessment. Understanding Sorry Business, sacred sites and connection to Country, Newbound said, is not a courtesy layered on top of broking, it is how the broking gets done, because community governance, decision-making and priorities flow from culture.
The exchange ran both ways. An elder at Exmouth taught him to read the ocean currents on his Country. Through the Northwest Cape Exmouth Aboriginal Corporation's NAIDOC art awards, artists taught him to see Indigenous paintings dimensionally – faces within a grass tree. Those experiences, he said, changed how he sees the country he drives through and remain among the privileges of his career.
The communities' own capability showed in the outcomes. At one community where he had flagged risks around derelict vehicles and children's safety, residents took the work into their own hands and went on to win a tidiest-town award. With frequent turnover among community CEOs - most of them non-Indigenous - his annual visits also gave each new leader continuity on a program the community had built over years. That consistency was likely helpful in a region where premiums have long strained households and businesses in northern Australia, and where extreme insurance affordability stress is concentrated in regional Western Australia.
Newbound is direct about what the work demands of brokers: Genuine respect, time on the ground and a rejection of the transactional approach that treats communities as revenue lines. Those who bring less, he warned, do damage that outlasts them. For those prepared to listen first he said the work can be their career highlight – different every day, built on mutual trust and proof that in the most underserved corners of the market, the broker's role as an adviser is probably more important than ever.
