NIBA / Special Feature
Technology has enabled clients to identify the best price, while generative AI is able to compare policies, point out differences and tell clients what they should be getting from their broker. Andrew Borden, CEO of Insurance Advisernet Australia, says, “As an industry, we're going to get compared to other purchasing experiences. It's really easy to do your shopping, book doctor's appointments, and do your banking online – and then suddenly I want to buy an insurance policy, and you're sending me a piece of paper that I have to print off and use a pen to write on and scan back in and send back to you? “Those other experiences will define the expectations that people have in the way they interact with insurance and insurance brokers. It’s already changing, and it'll continue to change quickly. The changing expectations of customers more broadly are incredibly important to understand from an insurance perspective. The reality is that, while business-to-business and business-to- consumer channels have differences, they also have great areas of overlap. We are all consumers – and we all know what a brilliant experience looks like with a brand, and we have all experienced the alternative, too. McKinsey’s B2B Pulse report found buyers use an average of 10 different channels during their buying journey – and expect a consistent experience across all of them – with the report concluding omnichannel engagement is now a baseline expectation, not a competitive advantage. Embedding that technology as a business foundation will be critical – and Benjamin Goodall, Envest Broking CEO, says, “Over the coming years that tolerance for friction or delay will collapse. Clients won’t understand why simple things still take days, why data has to be provided repeatedly, or why insights aren’t proactive. “Every other industry is training them to expect speed, transparency and predictive service. Broking won’t be exempt from that, and as those expectations carry into broking, the role of the broker becomes more critical, bringing context, judgment
and a level of trust and accountability that technology alone cannot replace.” Klipin says we’ve got to look beyond insurance to understand the experience clients expect. “The experience you deliver as a broker – both in person and digitally – is compared to every other customer experience your client has, both personally and professionally. “We need to identify the very best in customer experience as a baseline, and overlay that with the insurance and risk expertise good brokers have to share.”
brokers becoming an indispensable part of that trusted core. “An indispensable broker helps a client make better commercial decisions or helps partner with them on a range of things,” says Goodall. “The brokers who become indispensable will combine technical capability, commercial understanding, data skills and genuine strategic insight. This means much more risk advice and capability than brokers have been able to supply in the past. They’ll understand supply chain risk, cyber exposure, workforce issues, contractual risk transfer, capital pressures and operational resilience – not just premiums and policy wordings. As access to information becomes easier and faster, the value of the broker increasingly sits in how that information is interpreted and applied by providing context, judgment and confidence in decisions where the consequences matter.” Preparing for what lies ahead Client expectations are evolving and changing, and the temptation is to focus on how we meet them. The challenge, of course, lies in the fact that those expectations are always evolving, always moving, always changing – meaning ‘keeping up’ is never going to be enough. “The threat now is that it's really easy to find out what else is out there, and what great brokers are delivering. You can jump onto Gemini or Claude, or any free AI tool, and just say, hey, I just got this email from my broker at renewal, what else should I expect?" “The answer you get is really comprehensive – talking to you about risk management, your contract arrangements and other risks, so customer’s expectations can change quickly.”
The coming decade – the great redefinition
Over the years, there’s been a role for brokers who connect the insurer and the customer, identify the most suitable policy and get the deal done. And while there may still be brokers out there who focus on that aspect of the job, the harsh reality is they risk becoming obsolete. Borden says, “There are still a lot of people who get away with being a very transactional or price-based broker – they have clients that really appreciate what they do for them, and those brokers are still hard to convince about the need to provide risk-based advice. “The threat now is that it's really easy to find out what else is out there, and what great brokers are delivering. You can jump onto Gemini or Claude, or any free AI tool, and just say, hey, I just got this email from my broker at renewal, what else should I expect? “The answer you get is really comprehensive – talking to you about risk management, your contract arrangements and other risks, so customer’s expectations can change quickly.” [See the breakout box for more on that topic!] The real opportunity for brokers is not only to meet those expectations over the coming decade – but to redefine them altogether. Just as organisations lean on external experts for legal, business strategy, marketing and finance, the opportunity is to establish risk management as an integral business consideration – and
56 / INSURANCE ADVISER JUNE/JULY 2026
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