Insurance & risk advisory · Sydney
Protectingwhat you'vebuilt
The businesses with the best insurance outcomes aren't the ones who shop hardest at renewal. They're the ones who appointed someone to look after it properly, all year round.
The whole thing, briefly
Six ideas
this firm
runs on
Turn any card over for the short version, and a link to where the argument is made properly.
The appointment decision
Sending your renewal to three brokers divides the market between them.
Pick your adviser first.
Turn overInsurers won't quote the same risk twice through two brokers. The first to reach an underwriter takes that market and the next is turned away. You end up comparing fragments rather than the market.
Read the case Turn backHow we work
Your 'in-house' insurance and risk division. Five steps, running all year rather than once a year.
Turn overWork out what you're exposed to. Design the programme. Take it to the market properly. Keep it current as the business changes. Run the claim when one comes.
See the process Turn backFees, not commission
An agreed fee, set against the work. Commission comes out of the premium instead of sitting inside it.
Turn overWhen the market hardens and premiums jump, a percentage-based broker gets a pay rise for the same job. An agreed fee doesn't move. It's how an accountant or a solicitor charges, and for the same reason.
How the fee works Turn backClaims
A claim is the only moment anyone finds out whether the programme was worth what you paid for it.
Turn overWe build the case, put it to the insurer and argue it ourselves. You are not negotiating a dispute with your own insurer in the worst week your business has had.
How we run claims Turn backWhat we advise on
Property, liability, people, motor and transit, projects, and the specialist covers some businesses require.
Turn overSome industries we know that need specialist help: civil contracting, motor trade and bailment, farm & agriculture, events, professional services, trades, property and logistics.
Classes and industries Turn backThe power of partnership
Three of them: with you, with Insurance Advisernet, and with Bentleys Advisory.
Turn overA network placing $4.5 billion in premium gives us the market reach. Bentleys Advisory provides infrastructure. You get the reach of a large firm with the attention of a small one.
Who stands behind us Turn backThe premise
Competition
is supposed
to help you
Many businesses put their insurance out to two or three brokers at renewal, compare what comes back, and take the best of it. It feels like diligence. It usually isn't.
Brokers approach insurers on your behalf. When multiple brokers approach the same market for the same risk, insurers won't quote the same risk twice — so the market gets divided between them. One broker gets one set of insurers, another gets a different set, and each comes back with terms drawn from their slice.
You end up comparing fragments against fragments. It looks like a competitive process. What you're actually seeing is a market that has been carved up before anyone quoted anything.
The reframe
The question isn't which quote is best. It's who you want managing this.
You already work this way elsewhere. You don't run a tender between three accountants each March. You appointed one, they know your business, and that knowledge is the reason their advice is worth having.
Insurance is one of the few professional relationships businesses still treat as an annual shopping trip — and it's the one where being poorly understood costs you at the worst possible moment.
Appoint one adviser, give them the whole market to work with, and you get the market's full response instead of a share of it.
The power of partnership
Nobody
does this
alone
The way we work with clients — appointed, long-term, inside the business. — is the same way we work with the people behind us.
It's why a firm of our size can put the weight of a corporate broker behind a client and still have the person who understands your business answer the phone.
Appointed, not engaged
One adviser holding the role for years, not a supplier re-tendered each renewal. Everything else on this site follows from that.
The market, and the machinery
Access, placement authority and negotiating weight from a network placing $4.5 billion in premium across Australasia.
Advice that joins up
A joint venture with Bentleys NSW, so insurance sits alongside accounting and advisory counsel rather than apart from it.
Our fee model
We charge
for the work
Most brokers are paid a percentage of your premium. We prefer commission to be removed from the premium and charge an agreed professional fee instead.
Premiums move with the market cycle, with claims history, with changes in exposure. The work of managing a programme doesn't move with any of them. Charging a percentage of a number that swings for reasons unconnected to the job is a strange way to price professional work — and in the one place it does connect, it connects backwards.
A client's preemium increases by 20% because of the state of the insurance market and a commission-based broker's income rises twenty percent. Ours doesn't move.
| Commission | The BRS model | |
|---|---|---|
| How the adviser is paid | A percentage built into your premium | An agreed fee, invoiced separately |
| If your premium rises | Adviser income rises with it | Adviser income is unchanged |
| What you can see | One number, with the adviser's margin inside it | Premium and fee, priced separately |
| Government charges | Levied on a premium that includes the commission | Levied on the net premium only |
Claims
The day it
actually counts
Every broker will tell you they help with claims. The question is who puts your case to the insurer, and how well they do it.
We manage claims end to end and present your case ourselves. That means building the argument, handling the correspondence, pushing where it needs pushing, and staying in it until it resolves.
This is the point where decades of experience stop being a line on a website and start being worth something.
Who you'd be working with
Scale where
it counts
Mark Finn, Nell Brescia and Lauren Rahiman are the cornerstone of the practice — 78 years of advising between them, and the people who do the work rather than the people who win it. Behind them sits the support to deliver on what we promise.
And behind that sits Insurance Advisernet, one of the largest broking networks in the country. That gives us the market access, the placement authority and the systems a corporate broker takes for granted. What it doesn't give us is the layers — the four names between you and whoever actually understands your business.
Next step
Start with
a conversation
Send us what you have in place now. We'll read it properly and tell you what we see — including if the answer is that your current arrangements are sound.