Sarah Court’s (pictured) appointment this week as the next chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) lands with a clear message: this is not a reset. Court, currently deputy chair, is central to ASIC’s tougher enforcement posture in recent years and outgoing chair Joe Longo was explicit about what he believes she represents: continuity, capability and a regulator more willing to litigate.
For brokers, that continuity matters. ASIC is the conduct regulator for the insurance industry: it polices how products are designed and distributed, how consumer outcomes are delivered and what “good” looks like across advice, disclosure, marketing, claims handling and complaints outcomes - and the governance that sits behind all of it. Whatever happens in the boardroom of insurers or the pricing models of underwriters, it can be brokers who feel the first tremors when the conduct regulator’s posture hardens - because they are the human interface where policy, product and customer collide.
Court will formally commence as chair on June 1 but the market is already reading the tea leaves. There is an argument, especially from consumers and those scarred by misconduct failures, for example those uncovered by the Hayne Royal Commission, that ASIC’s strong enforcement-first stance has been overdue and is necessary. There is also a counter-argument, increasingly audible in parts of the insurance market, that regulators need to discipline bad actors but also do more to help Australia expand capacity, accelerate innovation and close widening protection gaps.
Of course, there are other major regulators, apart from ASIC, that shape the insurance industry and its outcomes.
While ASIC is about whether insurers and intermediaries behave properly and treat customers fairly, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) is about whether insurers can pay. APRA focuses on financial safety and stability - capital strength, solvency, risk management and the resilience of insurers to pay claims over time.
Then there’s the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The ACCC enforces competition and consumer law across the whole economy. It is not the insurance conduct regulator in the way ASIC is, but it shapes the competitive environment insurance operates in - scrutinising market power, anti-competitive behaviour and misleading conduct with a public interest lens.
Put together, this triptych clarifies the strategic question raised by Court’s appointment. Australia already has strong “guardrails” from APRA on balance-sheet soundness and from the ACCC on competitive integrity. ASIC, under Court, can keep its enforcement credibility - but the open question could be whether it also chooses to use its conduct mandate to provide clearer pathways for innovation in products and distribution, in a way that still protects consumers while helping the market respond to escalating risk.
That framing is where lessons from Asia become relevant: not as a call for weaker supervision, but as a prompt for ASIC - within a system already bounded by APRA and the ACCC - to consider whether protecting consumers in the next decade could also mean actively helping to enable the local market.
A recent Lloyd’s Development Group (LDG) study tour across Asia could offer some useful guidance. The tour’s leaders came home with a sharper sense that some Asian hubs treat insurance as an export industry and a capital-mobilisation engine - supported by regulators who actively want markets to grow up, scale up and diversify.
As Sophie Lancaster, executive director and deputy head of broking at Gallagher Re, put it: “From Hong Kong and Singapore, what we really saw is a regulator wanting to support the industry to be underwriting and supporting risk beyond their domestic economy,” she said. “In Australia, we are much more focused on solutions for our domestic economy.”
Lancaster led the LDG tour, together with Sam McNally from Wotton Kearney and Gerrie Johnson, property treaty underwriter at Munich Re. Lancaster and Johnson spoke with Insurance Business - before the appointment of Court – in their capacity as LDG committee members.
Johnson saw capital sophistication up close: “Singapore’s position as a regional reinsurance hub really demonstrated the scale and sophistication of capital deployment – alternative capital and parametric solutions – which we haven’t seen on the same scale yet in Australia,” she said.
Lancaster said a “really big theme” for her was that these regional capital dynamics are beginning to touch Australia directly: “What also came out of that ageing population piece, perpetuating slowing domestic growth, is a wave of capital coming from Asia looking for opportunity,” she said. “We’re seeing more money from North Asia with an interest in getting exposure to Australian insurance risk.”
This is where Court’s ASIC could be part of a strategic choice for local regulators. Australia can keep tightening the screws — important, sometimes necessary, occasionally overdue. Or it can keep the screws tight while also helping create conditions in which new capital, new products and new risk-transfer mechanisms can be brought to market safely, transparently and at scale.
For brokers, the best outcome is not softer regulators. It is regulators that are still feared by bad actors, but useful to good ones. Court’s appointment signals the enforcement era will continue. The challenge and the opportunity, according to some brokers, could be whether her chairmanship also becomes the moment ASIC begins to act in a way that is better at encouraging a market that can meet the risks now arriving.
