Insurers on both sides of the Tasman are increasingly building dedicated infrastructure for smaller, entrepreneurial intermediary networks - whether that's for authorised representatives (ARs) under Australia's Corporations Act regime, or authorised bodies (ABs) under New Zealand's post-2023 Financial Advice Provider (FAP) regime. Zurich has just made the latest move in Australia.
"This is a dedicated underwriting and distribution capability reserved solely to service the AR segment in Australia," said Alex Morgan (pictured), head of general insurance, Australia and New Zealand for Zurich Financial Services Australia (Zurich).
At this stage, Morgan said there is no plan to launch an equivalent team in New Zealand. But the trans-Tasman trend is becoming clearer: ARs, ABs and their equivalents are no longer being treated as a sub-category of the broker market. They're being treated as a strategic one.
Zurich's move lands at the leading edge of a slow but clear trend on the Australian side of the Tasman. QBE's Q nect platform, launched in October 2021, is the closest precedent, giving more than 1,600 AR practices and broking offices digital access to product materials, educational resources and underwriting teams. Marsh has operated its own branded AR network since 2002, with more than 100 client service consultants spread across Australia. IAG, for its part, names ARs as a distinct distribution channel alongside brokers, motor dealerships and financial institutions - not quite a dedicated team, but a clear signal that ARs have been broken out of the broader broker category in the insurer's own thinking.
The picture on the New Zealand side is notably thinner but the regulatory plumbing is in place and the commercial imperative is the same. The Financial Markets Authority's Authorised Body framework, established under the post-2023 FAP regime, allows advisory businesses to operate under a larger licensed FAP without holding their own licence, and individual broker businesses are actively using the route. But, as far as IB can tell at this stage, no NZ general insurer has publicly announced a dedicated AB-facing underwriting or service team of the kind Zurich has just stood up across the Tasman. That gap likely reflects the smaller scale of the NZ intermediary market, its heavier reliance on established broker networks and the relative youth of the FAP regime itself.
For Zurich and other insurers, the AR segment is a large and growing slice of the Australian distribution landscape, particularly in middle market and SME - the parts of the economy where insurers most need to win.
Morgan painted a portrait of the typical AR: entrepreneurial, relationship-driven, deeply embedded in local communities and often, he says, running businesses that are "wholly or majority owned by the principals."
"ARs are important for our book today, but they have the opportunity to be more important over time, as I think they will grow in importance," he said.
It's explicit acknowledgement from a major insurer that ARs are now a segment worth investing serious underwriting firepower in.
The structure of Zurich's new team reflects that, bringing together dedicated property, casualty and motor underwriters, SME specialists and a small distribution team doing BDM-style work. Morgan said, it isn't a concierge model.
"It's a decision-making, underwriter-centric model,” he said.
That could be a distinction that matters to AR brokers. They’ve long had access to BDMs and sales relationship managers across the insurer market. What they haven't had much of until recently is dedicated access to the underwriters who actually say yes or no.
Of course, ARs do the same work as brokers and are regarded by themselves and industry stakeholders as insurance brokers but they operate off someone else’s AFSL license. There isn’t a hard line between the two. Morgan agreed.
"ARs are insurance brokers,” he said. “They are an insurance intermediary that provides advice and advocacy to their clients in the purchase of insurance."
But the business shape is different, he said, and those differences matter.
ARs are typically smaller, hyper-entrepreneurial and super-local. Morgan said many of their principals originate from bigger, more corporatised broking environments and start ARs with a clear view that there was "something different they could provide and a different way they could run their business and sell their proposition."
That's a segment with its own operating rhythm - and, Morgan said, its own service expectations. Zurich heard a consistent message from ARs that they don't always feel they have the level of access afforded to their corporate competitors.
"They come out of a meeting with a customer and they've got an instruction or a request or a requirement,” he said. “They want to pick up the phone and they want to be able to deal with the decision-maker.”
Zurich's move lands in a broader context that mid-market brokers across Australia and New Zealand will recognise. In Australia, the AR model is increasingly associated with high-quality breakaways from the big institutional broking houses. Networks like Insurance Advisernet and Steadfast have scaled dramatically and industry body NIBA explicitly represents brokers and ARs alongside each other as part of the same intermediated market.
In New Zealand, the post-2023 FAP regime has reshaped the adviser landscape, with Authorised Bodies operating under larger licensed networks playing a role structurally similar to the Australian AR. The logic is the same: entrepreneurial principals, hyper-local relationships, SME-heavy books and a preference for dealing directly with decision-makers rather than going through layers.
Zurich's Australian investment could be the clearest recent signal that insurers are ready to build infrastructure to match.
