This month, ARTes Specialty has launched an integrated crane and rigging policy that marks its third specialist insurance offering in Australia in under two years. The London-based managing general agent (MGA) is strategically growing its plant and equipment book in industries that mainstream insurers have long found difficult to underwrite.
In partnership with Australian wholesale provider Mobius Insurance, the crane offering follows ARTes’ commercial loggers product in 2024 and its contractors’ plant and equipment cover in January this year. Backed by specialist Lloyd’s capacity, it folds material damage of up to $15 million, business interruption, riggers’ liability and transport exposures into a single wording, with liability limits running to $20 million. Claims are managed and settled in Australia by ToPAz Claims Management. ARTes, an appointed representative of Lloyd’s managing agent Asta - part of the Davies group - has flagged further products for the region.
The common thread is a wager that Australia’s specialist trades are both underserved and worth the effort.
“Australia is a very attractive market for us because it has a number of specialist industries that are critical to the economy but can often find themselves underserved from an insurance perspective,” said Chris Thomas (pictured), CEO of ARTes Specialty.
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The sectors ARTes is chasing are among the country’s most hazardous. Safe Work Australia’s most recent figures show machinery operators and drivers recorded the highest workplace fatality rate of any occupation in 2024 - 6.7 deaths per 100,000 workers, more than five times the national average - while transport, agriculture and forestry and construction together accounted for the largest share of the 188 workers who died on the job that year.
In the current economic climeate, the financial backdrop is also testing. Construction is the single biggest source of corporate failure in Australia, accounting for roughly 27% of all insolvencies in 2023–24, according to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). A further 2,636 building firms became insolvent in the year to March 2025, up 23% on the previous year. Many are small, equipment-dependent operators running several policies across a single job - exactly the kind of fragmented arrangement that can unravel when a loss occurs and insurers dispute which policy responds, a problem Insurance Business has examined in the coverage gaps that can surface inside a construction head contract.
For brokers, that complexity is the selling point of a consolidated wording: one policy covering material damage, liability, transport and specialist operational risks means one underwriter accountable for the whole operation, rather than several insurers debating responsibility after an incident.
What ARTes argues sets it apart is where the underwriting begins. “We don’t begin with a generic insurance product and try to make it fit a specialist sector,” Thomas said, describing a model that starts with how an industry actually operates - the equipment it depends on, the contracts it signs and where its real exposures sit - before a policy is written.
That local fit is also the pitch from its distribution partner. “This product has been specifically developed to address the real operational and insurance challenges faced by crane and rigging operators in Australia,” said Tom Richards, director of Mobius Insurance.
ARTes is not alone in spotting the gap. Specialist MGAs drawing on Lloyd’s capacity have proliferated in Australia – a Queensland agency recently securing Lloyd’s coverholder status is one of several examples – as carriers increasingly delegate niche underwriting to focused teams. For brokers, the competitive question is less about who can launch a specialist wording than who will keep servicing it, and paying claims, when the market turns.
That is the real test of ARTes’ Australian bet. Specialist capacity is easy to offer in a soft market; its value to brokers and clients in forestry, plant and crane operations will be measured by whether it stays committed through the next hard one.
