Speaking at the National Insurance Brokers Association (NIBA) Convention on the Gold Coast, Anthony McLean, Group CEO of Ambrose Construct Group, explains how the insurance building repair and restoration specialist is preparing for storm season as severe weather events grow in frequency and magnitude. He outlines how a national footprint allows the group to mobilise crews across states to wherever a catastrophe strikes, and how a first-in, last-out policy, specialist payment terms and streamlined on-site processes keep local trades engaged despite competing demand from Olympic Games projects and new home builds under the federal government’s Housing Accord. McLean also discusses how the group’s dedicated broker liaison team gives brokers a whole-of-claim update in a single call, how the motto “We look after people, not just claims” is upheld across 850 staff nationwide, and what CVC Capital Partners’ investment means for insurers and brokers seeking financially stable repair partners.
Anthony McLean - 00:00:00 Claims are about people, they’re not about a number. If we can continue and drive the insurance repairs into their business every day, it keeps the community alive.
Daniel Wood - 00:00:13 Hello and welcome to Insurance Business TV. We’re at the NEBA Convention on the Gold Coast and I’m joined by Anthony McLean. He’s Group CEO of Ambrose Construct Group and we’re going to talk about storm season readiness. Trade availability and what brokers can expect from Ambrose during the claims process. Anthony, nice to have you here.
Anthony McLean - 00:00:33 Hey, Danny, thanks for having me.
Daniel Wood - 00:00:34 Yeah, it’s a pleasure. We’re already in storm season, and when a catastrophe hits, what does Ambrose Construct Group’s response actually look like on the ground, and how do you scale that?
Anthony McLean - 00:00:46 I think what we see is catastrophic weather events can hit anywhere at any time. And where we sometimes think they’re going to hit is exactly where they don’t hit. So one of the keys to our success and what we’ve actually focused on is the national footprint. So where we have storm season in Western Australia in the June, July area, and then East Coast in November, December through to March, it’s our ability to actually move our staff around the country. and respond to the location, the severity, when and as it happens. So a classic example is what happened in Alice Springs last week. We were able to mobilise our teams out of Western Australia, South Australia, and the East Coast to go to Alice Springs to respond to that weather event that happened last week.
Daniel Wood - 00:01:36 One of the challenges that probably impacts you there to some extent is trade availability, ’cause it’s pretty tight everywhere. You’ve got the Olympics on one side, you’ve got new home builds, How’s that pressure showing up in repair timeframes and what are you doing to protect insurance capacity?
Anthony McLean - 00:01:53 And I think you’re exactly right. The pressure, the trade pressure is real. You know, one of the misconceptions is that as an insurance builder, we have trades lined up out the door just waiting for us to give them work and they’re available whenever we need them. And nothing could be further from the truth. With the housing accord and the new home build that’s been put on by the federal government, but then also just the pressures that are happening in everyday towns. What we do is we’ve got a first-in, last-out policy, which means whenever there is any event or anything that happens, we have our dedicated trade base that we use every day. And for those trades, we’ve got specialist payment terms to ensure that they don’t have to hold cash flow for extended periods of time. Our jobs are extremely well structured, so when they turn up, they don’t lose time. So we’ve got materials on site, a supervisor has coordinated when they’re going to attend, and then the process and the technology for them to sign in on site, be inducted into our safety system, oftentimes is a click of a button. And it’s actually making sure that they spend more time doing their job than doing the administration to work in the insurance industry. So our real focus has been make it as easy for the trade on the ground to do the work and make sure that when we give them work, we’re really supporting their local business. Because if you’re in regional or outer Australia, sometimes there may not be a lot of work out there. But if we can continue and drive the insurance repairs into their business every day, it keeps the community alive. And that’s a real focus. Our staff live and work locally. and we engage our local trade base before we bring in trades from external areas to help out.
Daniel Wood - 00:03:40 Going from the tradie side to the broker side of what goes on here, brokers often find themselves chasing updates on their clients’ claims. You’ve now got a dedicated broker liaison team in place. What does that change for a broker, and what was the particular friction you were trying to remove from this process?
Anthony McLean - 00:03:57 I think one of the things that we’ve seen, certainly from a builder’s perspective, is how more prominent the broker is now featuring in the claims journey. And one of the things that we saw was at times brokers just had a dearth of information. So they wanted to know what was happening, but if it was sitting with an insurer or an adjuster, sometimes they’d be out of the loop. So the instigation to put behind a broker liaison team was really so they have a dedicated point of contact when they speak to someone from our team. they get a whole of claim response. So it’s not just where a repair might be at, but it’s also where a specialist report could be. It’s actually what the status of the makesafe is. So in a single phone call, the broker knows exactly what’s happening. They know who’s on site and they know what’s gonna happen next. So when they’re talking to their customer, they’re absolutely confident that they know what, they’ve got their best interests at heart and they can move it forward. And it’s really about, it’s just good old-fashioned service. It’s actually closing that loop down So the broker is one of the most informed stakeholders in the claim process because ultimately that’s what their customer has engaged them for, is to move their claim forward in the customer’s best interest. And so it’s actually just making sure that they’ve got that position as a key stakeholder in our repair journey.
Daniel Wood - 00:05:13 That’s a good segue into your motto, which is we look after people, not just claims. But that is an easy thing to say in a company profile. But what does it look like in practice when you’re in someone’s damaged home? How do you hold staff across a national network to that motto?
Anthony McLean - 00:05:29 Yeah, it’s a really good question. And I think now we’ve got 850 staff across the group. It really comes down to our workflow and it comes down to our training. So we still do fortnightly inductions for everyone that joins the group. And as they come in, we talk about our values, we talk about That claims are about people. They’re not about a number and they’re not about volume or, you know, revenue or whatever it might be. So understanding that insurance customers, one, they didn’t ask to be in that situation. 2, they generally don’t know what they’re about to walk into. And 3, they didn’t pick us. The insurer or the broker has picked us. So if they’re going to do a new home build or a reno, they get to pick the trade. They build rapport. So for us, because this is all we do, it’s one, being very empathetic to the situation that’s occurring because everyone’s situation is different. But then it’s actually the workflow that steps them through that communication piece and the fact that we’re speaking to customers nearly daily in the early stages of the claim so they know exactly what’s going on. We’ve got a customer portal that they can get into at any point in time and pull the information which tells them what it is that they need to do. Our customer welcome pack from right up front, it’s about 45, 50 pages long. And what it does is it just says to customers, this is what a MakeSafe is. This is what you could— if you’re not happy, here’s how you make a complaint, right? So it’s actually making sure that everything’s fully transparent from the outset. And I think that consistency, empathy, and having a dedicated workflow that everyone follows consistently, it’s a standardised model. allows us to roll that out consistently around the country.
Daniel Wood - 00:07:12 CVC Capital Partners is acquiring a controlling stake in the Ambrose business.
Anthony McLean - 00:07:17 Yeah.
Daniel Wood - 00:07:17 What does that actually mean for brokers and insurers dealing with you, and why do you think the industry might need this kind of financial backing?
Anthony McLean - 00:07:26 I think it’s, it’s been very interesting talking to people in the industry about their perception and what it means to have a global private equity firm buying into a supplier. From our perspective, and certainly what we’ve seen since we’ve acquired a number of other business entities, is today they’re different businesses to what they were 6 months ago. They’ve now got an embedded safety system, they’ve got risk and compliance, we’ve got internal legal, you know, we’re actually stepping them through each of those compliance steps in a deeper level than they ever have done before. They’re all really, really good suppliers, But what our process has done is enable that backend— HR, fleet, compliance— all to step up to a whole new level. So interacting with a global PE firm, that enables us for our research and development. Now we’ve got global eyes, we can see things that are working overseas that we’ve never heard of. It’s been making sure that the compliance things that we’re looking at from a CPS 230 perspective here in Australia, we’ve also got international view on what that means and trends that could be coming our way. So we look at it as a really exciting time that we’ve got a motivated global player who’s interested in our market and is making our group infinitely stronger, which actually de-risks it for brokers, for insurers, and making sure we’re going to be here long into the future. But we’re here with a singular focus of ensuring that we’re reducing lifecycle, We’re delivering great quality repairs, and that customer journey is as best as it possibly can be for the circumstances the individual customer finds himself in.
Daniel Wood - 00:09:04 Anthony McLean, thanks for your time.
Anthony McLean - 00:09:06 Thanks, Danny. Ciao.
