Lockton has appointed Patrick Hunter as head of risk consulting for the Pacific, placing a New Zealand-based leader in charge of the brokerage's technical advisory work across Australia and New Zealand.
Hunter joins from Marsh, where he developed expertise across valuations, risk engineering, catastrophe modelling, insurance analytics and business interruption analysis. Lockton said his work has helped clients strengthen resilience and get more value from their insurance programmes at both pre-loss and post-loss stages. He will work with Lockton's advisory and broking teams to expand the practice's coverage of those disciplines across the Pacific region.
Hunter said businesses today face increasingly complex and interconnected risks. "By bringing together specialist expertise across valuations, risk engineering, catastrophe modelling, analytics and business interruption, we have an opportunity to build a truly integrated Risk Consulting practice that delivers practical commercial outcomes for clients across the Pacific," he said.
Marcus Pearson, CEO of Lockton Pacific, said Hunter brings a combination of technical expertise, commercial insight and large catastrophe loss experience that aligns with the firm's strategy of making a meaningful difference to clients' businesses through specialist risk consulting capabilities.
The hire arrives against a market environment in which underinsurance and accurate risk assessment have become governance questions as much as insurance questions. Gallagher Insurance New Zealand chief broking officer Mark Jones said in March that underinsurance "is not just a claims problem anymore - it's a financing and governance problem," with banks and investors now asking sharper questions about insurance to value, business interruption modelling and location exposures.
Vero's annual SME Insurance Index for New Zealand, published the same month, found more than one in five businesses were not confident in their own prospects, with nearly two-thirds having seen revenue fall over the past year. For those businesses, accurate sum insured and business interruption cover that reflects realistic recovery timeframes are increasingly what lenders and governance frameworks are asking for - not just what a broker recommends. Independent valuations and BI modelling, the areas Hunter's practice covers, are the services that answer those questions.
Insurance Council of New Zealand figures show commercial material damage and business interruption gross written premium fell from $1.597 billion in 2024 to $1.427 billion in 2025, a market backdrop that makes accurate insurance-to-value data harder to take for granted, not easier. For brokers advising commercial clients, the trigger for engaging a risk consulting service is increasingly a client question about governance, bank covenant compliance, or an upcoming asset valuation review - not simply a renewal conversation about coverage scope.
Lockton's own risk consulting practice published a property risk guide in May identifying five areas now shaping insurer appetite and pricing at renewal: building information, catastrophe and environmental exposure, financial structure, policy design and development-stage risk. Hunter's remit spans all five.
The hire extends a pattern. Lockton launched a standalone risk consulting practice in Australia in 2024 under Ben Crowther, framing it as a way to reach mid-market clients who typically cannot access integrated risk and broking services normally reserved for larger companies. Hunter's appointment brings that model under a Pacific-wide banner rather than a country-specific one, reflecting Lockton's positioning of its risk consulting capability as a regional offering rather than a series of national practices operating independently.
It also comes a year after Pearson himself joined Lockton Pacific as CEO from Marsh McLennan, part of a broader run of senior hires the brokerage has made as it builds out its New Zealand and Australian presence since entering the New Zealand market in 2021.
