For New Zealand brokers placing forestry, logging and heavy plant risks, the most important test of specialist cover is not just what is on the slip. It is also the one that arrives months later, when a harvester burns out on a remote skid site or a crane topples on a steep East Coast forestry road and the client discovers what their policy is actually worth. That distinction between capacity that looks strong at placement and capacity that performs at claim time is where specialist insurance either proves itself or quietly fails.
The point has been sharpened across the Tasman by ARTes Specialty, a London-based managing general agent that has spent the past two years building a plant and equipment book in the Australian market.
ARTes has launched three products into Australia – commercial loggers, plant and equipment, and, most recently, an integrated crane and rigging policy - all backed by Lloyd’s capacity, distributed locally and with claims handled in-country. Chris Thomas (pictured), CEO of ARTes Specialty, has been unusually blunt about the limits of the paper itself. “Capacity on its own isn’t enough,” he said of the insurer’s Australian expansion.
It is a striking admission from a business that sells capacity, but it speaks to a scepticism many brokers carry quietly. Two markets can offer near-identical security, wording and price, and none of that paperwork reveals whether anyone in the country understands a rigging contract, can inspect a damaged crawler crane, or can move a claim along before a contractor’s cash flow collapses. “Brokers and clients need confidence that there are experienced people on the ground who understand the local market, can respond quickly and will be there when a claim occurs,” Thomas said.
For New Zealand, the argument lands squarely on forestry. Forestry and wood products remain among the country’s largest export earners, with revenue forecast to rise about 2 per cent to $6.3 billion in the year to 30 June 2026, according to the Ministry for Primary Industries forestry and wood-processing data. The sector supports a workforce of more than 42,000 people, on Treasury’s medium-term outlook for forestry exports, and runs on high-value, hard-to-replace machinery operating on unsealed, steep terrain in regions such as Gisborne, Northland and Southland - exactly the conditions where a single loss can sideline a contractor and where recovery is slow, costly and specialised.
The gap between cover on paper and cover in practice is not hypothetical here. A North Island forestry business was left $85,000 out of pocket after an insurer declined a Cyclone Gabrielle–related claim, in a dispute that turned on recovery wording, machinery access and a requirement for written consent before equipment was moved, as detailed in this recent ruling on a declined Cyclone Gabrielle forestry claim. For brokers with rural and forestry portfolios, the case is a reminder that the decisive questions are often buried in how a policy responds after the event, not in the headline limit.
That points to a sharper set of questions at placement. Where does claims adjusting actually happen, and who does it? Does the person assessing the loss understand the equipment and the contractual obligations the client operates under? Can the insurer respond inside the client’s operating timeframe, or will a remote loss sit in a queue while the business haemorrhages money?
New Zealand underwriters working in the space make much the same point. Matt Ziegler, head of pacific agencies at Underwriting Agencies of New Zealand (UANZ), whose Auckland-based firm covers cranes, excavators and forestry equipment, argues that service - not price - is now the differentiator in a softening market. “It’s 100% the service game at the moment,” he said when speaking to a panel of specialist underwriters on soft-market pressures, advising brokers to compete on claims handling, wording and value.
The context matters because capacity itself is no longer scarce. Specialist underwriting agencies have proliferated in New Zealand, holding appetite for precisely the harder-to-place risks that mainstream insurers approach cautiously. As the New Zealand Underwriting Agencies Council set out at its recent Christchurch expo on the evolving risk market, the real challenge for brokers is no longer finding capacity but knowing where to look and, by extension, which providers will still be answering the phone when a complex loss lands.
For a generalist risk, these distinctions may be marginal. For a logging contractor or crane operator whose entire business rests on a handful of high-value machines, they are the difference between a claim that gets paid and a claim that gets argued. As more overseas and Lloyd’s-backed capacity targets Australasia’s underserved specialist sectors, the temptation is to treat capacity as a commodity and place on price and security alone.
The uncomfortable takeaway for brokers is the same on both sides of the Tasman: The time to test whether specialist capacity is real is before the loss, not after.
