Castle Insurance will move its national home and contents portfolio to Canopius from December 1, replacing QBE Insurance Australia as underwriter and the agency has become a Lloyd's coverholder as part of the process. Capacity will come through Lloyd's Syndicate 4444, which Canopius manages.
QBE is not exiting the wider business. It stays on as one of four underwriters supporting the Sure Insurance brand in regional Queensland and on Norfolk Island, alongside Chubb, New India and Pacific.
Coverholder approval was granted through Lloyd's in Australia and Lloyd's in the UK. Bradley Heath (pictured), managing director of Sure Insurance and Castle Insurance in Brisbane, said the status carries obligations.
"We're honoured to become a Lloyd's coverholder because of the standards that they uphold," Heath said. "That's not something that's handed out lightly, we know, and we're aware of our responsibilities there."
Asked whether QBE or Castle drove the change, Heath said the position was mutual.
"I think the best way I'd characterise it was very much a mutual position. It probably surrounds growth aspirations and where we both saw the businesses going. So there's no animosity between us."
Sure Insurance is both the company and one of its two brands: Sure writes regional Queensland and Norfolk Island, Castle covers south-east Queensland and the rest of the country. Nothing changes for policies written under the Sure brand, Heath said, and brokers with regional Queensland and Norfolk Island business do not need to take any action. On the Castle side, existing clients move onto the new underwriter from renewal after December 1.
Castle retains policy administration and claims, handled by its own loss adjusters and staff around the country. The operational contact points are unchanged.
"Nothing changes except it gets better. Because there's a better product that will be available to them and a better set of underwriting acceptance criteria," Heath said.
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The product disclosure statements (PDS) and underwriting guidelines have been rewritten as part of the transition, following what the agency describes as extensive broker feedback gathered nationally. Heath pointed to two areas of expansion: Castle will now write, in limited cases, risks where the owner operates a small business from home, against a defined list of acceptable occupations, with cover applying to the house rather than the business. Small hobby farms and acreages, previously restricted under Castle, will now be offered a similar cover to Sure with an expanded Castle risk appetite. Heath also said the rewrite sharpened the clarity of cover in areas including water damage.
Brokers will want the new documents before anniversary of existing policies and new offers are provided. Castle says it will communicate the detail of the cutover, the new PDS and the underwriting rules to the market shortly.
Castle was created to take on the intermediated QBE book. In July 2025, QBE announced it would stop offering domestic householders' insurance directly through its broker channel from October 1 2025 – an opening for an agency whose majority owner had already signalled national ambitions. Steadfast chief executive Robert Kelly said in 2024 that Sure's proposition could go Australia-wide.
Sure took regional Queensland and Norfolk Island policies and the newly created Castle brand took the rest of Australia, including south-east Queensland. Under that arrangement QBE underwrote 100% of the Castle portfolio and 20% of Sure's regional book. Sure itself began in 2019, writing home cover in Queensland cyclone country where insurance had become harder to place.
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Canopius is probably better known to Australian brokers for commercial and specialty lines than for household cover. The London-headquartered group provides insurance across more than 130 countries. According to Syndicate 4444's annual report filed with Lloyd's, its allocated capacity for the 2025 year of account was £2.55 billion, up from £2 billion for 2024. Trade publication The Insurer reported that the increase took 4444 past Beazley's Syndicate 2623 to become the largest syndicate at Lloyd's by stamp capacity for that year of account.
There is a QBE connection at the top. Andrew Ziolkowski, Canopius country head of Australia and Pacific and head of insurance for APAC, joined in October 2025 from QBE, where he was chief underwriting and transformation officer, as we reported when Canopius announced its new ANZ head.
"The Canopius team are underwriters first and foremost," Ziolkowski said in the announcement. He pointed to the backing of one of Lloyd's largest syndicates as the basis for long-term disciplined growth, and said Canopius recognised aligned partnership qualities in the Sure–Castle team.
The partnership is being struck while both businesses face ownership change.
Steadfast owns 70% of Sure, acquired in 2023 as part of the group's agency expansion strategy. Steadfast has since agreed to be acquired by a consortium of Amwins, Dragoneer Investment Group and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) at $6.00 a share, valuing it at approximately $7.7 billion. Under the announced structure, Amwins takes Steadfast's underwriting agency arm and Dragoneer and KKR take the broking business, which would be expected to place Sure with Amwins, though the consortium has not confirmed the treatment of individual agencies. Completion is targeted for late December, weeks after Castle moves onto Canopius paper.
Heath said his own position is unchanged.
"I still own the other 30% and nothing's changing there. So I'm not going anywhere."
At Canopius, Samsung Fire & Marine lifted its stake to 40% in June 2025 through a US$570 million investment, buying from the Centerbridge Partners-led consortium. In September 2026, Korean media reported that Samsung Fire and Samsung Life planned to acquire a further 50% for more than ₩2 trillion (approximately US$1.47 billion). Both companies said no final decision had been made. Any change of control would require approval from Lloyd's and the UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).
For brokers, the immediate steps are to obtain the new PDS and underwriting guidelines from Castle, confirm how existing clients transfer after December 1, and note that regional Queensland and Norfolk Island business placed through Sure is unaffected.
Heath signalled more product movement to come. "There's other areas that we can consider in the future as well that we want to get involved in that we're not involved in at the moment on a national scale," he said.
