For an industry built on numbers, the most valuable currency in broking right now is words. Many industry leaders have always placed a high value on a broker’s ability to turn a client’s business risks into a compelling risk story. But now, arguably more than ever, as complex risks increase and the local and global economic situation gets even more gloomy, the brokers who can translate that chaos into a coherent narrative are the ones who will keep their books, and their clients, intact.
"I think, at our best, our brokers need to be storytellers," said Roger Abel (pictured), managing director of Rothbury Insurance Brokers. "Stories that answer, 'Why have premiums increased when I haven't had a claim myself in five or ten years and yet my premiums have been going up for the last two or three?' Or conversely, 'I have had claims and now my premiums are going down, or I've been approached by someone else.'"
Sitting inside that framing is a central tension of broking in 2026: clients no longer accept that insurance pricing is a black box, and many tend to push back more often than in the past.
Abel's go-to explainer leans on the everyday economics clients already understand.
"Insurance pricing changes do require explanation and that's not always easy," he said. "For years I've compared insurance pricing to other commodities.”
The Rothbury leader said he’s explained how global petrol prices or dairy prices – a significant contributor to the New Zealand economy - going up and down is simply supply and demand.
“It's got supply and demand dynamics, and insurance ironically is the same,” he said. “When capital is freely available pricing pressure goes down."
That analogy does heavy lifting by recasting premium movement as a market event rather than a moral judgement on the client's risk profile — and it shifts the conversation from "what did I do wrong?" to "what's happening in the wider market?"
But Abel is the first to concede the analogy only works if the broker is willing to keep telling the story, week in and week out. Because for the people writing the cheques, the volatility rarely feels rational.
"However, when you are a busy manufacturer, importer or building owner and you see insurance price volatility, it doesn't always make sense," he said.
That's the gap brokers are now paid to close. Not with a spreadsheet, with a story.
The irony is perhaps that this storytelling imperative is probably intensifying precisely as the market softens. Insurer profitability is robust, capital is plentiful and pricing pressure is easing - conditions that should, in theory, make broker conversations easier.
They don't. A softer market raises a new set of awkward questions: Why didn't my premium fall further? Why is my neighbour being approached by three competitors? Why is my broker still earning the same commission on a smaller premium?
"I don't think there's a perfect answer,” said Abel. “It comes down to having ongoing conversations - helping clients understand what's driving pricing and what's changing in the market.”
In this context of relatively soft pricing, insurer profitability and a flat economy, the renewal letter needs to be a prompt for a wider conversation about the client’s business needs and their insurance risk management.
For many brokers, AI-driven quoting platforms, direct-to-consumer insurers and price-comparison tools have commoditised the transactional layer of the job. What they haven't commoditised - and arguably can't — is the human capacity to sit across the table from a frustrated building owner and explain why the global reinsurance cycle has just landed on their balance sheet.
That's the role Abel is sketching out: less price-deliverer, more sense-maker. Less product pusher, more market interpreter.
For brokers prepared to embrace it, the storytelling role can be a bridge over the soft market and their clients’ economic challenges. For those who don't, the next soft market may not feel soft at all - it'll feel like a slow-motion churn event, as clients who never understood their premiums in the first place quietly take a call from someone who can finally explain them.
The brokers winning in 2026 likely won't be the ones with the best price, they'll be the ones with the best explanation of it.
