A new Australian third party administrator (TPA) launches today and is betting that the cause of most broker frustration in claims is not the handling - it is the chasing. The new industry player argues that most of a broker's claims effort is spent asking where a file is up to and that this is where accounts are lost.
Clarion Claims, founded by Drew Schnehage (pictured left) and Tetiana George (pictured right) has backing from Correlation Risk Partners, an insurance-focused investment business that funds underwriting ventures, brokers, managing general agents and technology providers. Schnehage, formerly CEO of Solvd Group's TPA business for more than six years, is CEO. George, co-founder and CEO of claims and compliance platform Curium, brings the technology.
The timing is pointed. Australians lodged a record 119,949 complaints with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) in 2025-26 - the third consecutive year above 100,000 - with delay in claim handling the single most complained-about issue. Meanwhile NIBA's 2026 Broker Market Survey confirms speed on claims tops broker priorities when brokers assess an insurer.
Schnehage's diagnosis is narrower than the complaint statistics suggest.
"Most of a broker's claims effort isn't handling the claim, it's asking where it's up to," Schnehage said.
That distinction matters commercially. Research from the National Insurance Brokers Association (NIBA), produced with Insurance Advisernet and CoreData in February 2026, found clients save an average of 7.2 hours when managing a claim through a broker, and that 95% regard their broker as critical to claims resolution. Those hours are absorbed by the broker, and a meaningful share of them go on status enquiries that produce no movement on the file.
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Clarion's proposition is that the broker forwards the claim or is copied on the client's email, and automation handles intake, lodgement and follow-ups from there, with staff intervening where judgement is required. Brokers see the file in real time rather than requesting an update.
Schnehage is willing to be measured on it.
"The test I'd put to any broker: after ninety days with us, has claims stopped being the thing that costs you renewals?" Schnehage said.
Intake automation alone would not distinguish Clarion from the model it is trying to replace and George said so plainly. The decision engine is the difference. Clarion runs a decision engine that applies policy wording consistently and grounds outcomes in the facts on the file. Her argument is that inconsistency, not slowness, is the deeper problem.
"That variance is the real fairness problem in claims," George said.
Two experienced claims managers handed the same file will often reach different conclusions, she said - not through incompetence, but because interpretation shifts with workload, with the last comparable claim and with how the customer sounded on the phone. Australian laws and codes are built into the platform, with breach detection running continuously rather than surfacing in a report afterwards.
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"No person carries that entire framework in their head consistently, on every file, at four o'clock on a Friday," George said.
The claims manager's role changes accordingly: resolving bottlenecks, checking the reasoning, moving the file forward. It is a defensible position at a moment when complaints data and broker research are being read together across the market, and when service quality and claim rejection sit alongside delay in AFCA's top three grievances.
The more consequential claim George makes concerns what happens outside the administrator entirely.
"In some product classes as much as 60% of claim activity happens outside the TPA – it sits with the supply chain," George said.
That is where oversight typically fails, because the claim is being progressed by repairers, assessors and suppliers whose systems the administrator cannot see into. Curium's role is to bring those supply chains onto the platform quickly, giving Clarion visibility even where a third party is doing the work.
Curium and Clarion remain separate businesses with separate boards and balance sheets, George said, with the commercial relationship at arm's length and disclosed, and claims decisions and compliance oversight resting with Clarion's people.
For brokers, the structural detail worth noting is ownership. Clarion is Australian owned and independent, with no insurer or repairer holding a stake - which Schnehage argued removes any quiet obligation to a part of the supply chain and any offshore parent whose priorities outrank an Australian client's.
Whether it delivers is another question and Schnehage is not hedging on accountability.
"If a broker has a poor experience with Clarion, that's mine to answer for," Schnehage said.
The market has heard technology-led claims promises before. What is testable here is narrow and specific: whether a broker spends less time asking where a claim is up to. That is measurable within a quarter and brokers will know before Clarion does.
