Australian insurers and agencies are rapidly upgrading the technology that sits between underwriters and brokers - and the past 12 months have delivered some tangible proof points that the change is more than hype.
IAG, for example, launched PolicyPlace, a new digital quoting and binding platform for its intermediated business, describing it as part of a two-year, $180 million technology transformation. The initial release was tied to a CGU commercial property product called Padlock, with IAG stating that all new business quotes for Padlock would be transacted on the new platform.
Suncorp, meanwhile, has pointed to momentum in connecting large broker partners to VeroEdge, its intermediated business insurance policy platform - and signalled more broker connections are due in FY26.
And it’s not just the majors. Specialist players are also leaning hard into broker-facing tech. Cyber underwriting agency Emergence has said it launched a new website with a dedicated Broker Hub and Resource Centre, alongside an API solution aimed at integrating with broker systems for faster quote/bind/document issuance. Clover has positioned its OnePatch platform as a broker-centric, automated underwriting engine, claiming more than 95% of quotes are handled without manual intervention.
The direction of travel is clear: insurers and underwriters want faster digital trading and more straight-through processing. Brokers, however, are increasingly asking a sharper question: who is actually doing the work that makes these platforms run?
For Shane Brady (pictured), director of Stone Lane Broking & Risk Advisory, the biggest shift is not that technology is suddenly doing the “broker job”. It’s that it is rearranging the work and, in doing so, shifting where brokers must prove their worth.
“AI will reshape the workflow, but I firmly believe it doesn’t replace good brokers. It simply changes where broker value sits,” said Brady.
In practice, Brady says the real gains are emerging in workflow automation: using systems and processes that reduce rework, triage inbound matters and stop the business from being “busy” without being scalable. The prize, in his view, is capacity - freeing experienced people to spend more time on advice quality, negotiation, complex placement and relationship management, instead of drowning in repeatable tasks.
He expects automation to progressively strip out low-value manual steps: re-entering data already held on file, reminders and chasing, basic endorsements, routine certificate requests and “surface-level” comparisons. He also sees AI becoming useful in the background - sorting and routing emails, extracting key information from documents, and flagging what’s missing before a submission is even sent.
But he’s emphatic about the line that won’t move: judgement. The hardest part of broking - interpreting the client’s risk, advocating in a negotiation, and landing cover that truly responds in a claim - is not a simple pattern-recognition exercise.
Brady’s second point is more confronting for insurers: brokers may welcome quicker quotes and better visibility, but they’re wary of “efficiency” that simply relocates administration.
“We inherently take on the lion’s share of admin tasks and data input without much benefit,” he said.
In Brady’s telling, insurer portals can be genuinely helpful for standard risks and status visibility matters. The problem is duplication: brokers often still have to gather, cleanse and structure the same information — then re-key it into multiple insurer systems that don’t talk to each other.
That’s why Brady keeps coming back to connectivity. The next phase of broker tech, he argued, won’t be won by who has the slickest portal screen. It will be won by who eliminates double-handling: pre-fill, system-to-system integration, and the ability for broker workflows to connect directly into insurer workflows without creating a second administrative job.
The subtext for insurers is strategic. If brokers increasingly experience “AI adoption” as a cost shift - more fields, more compulsory data, more portals - then the industry risks undermining the very distribution partners it relies on for advice-led placement and long-tail client relationships. Technology is changing broking. But Brady’s message is that the winners won’t be those who digitise the most steps - they’ll be those who digitise the right steps and leave brokers to do the work that only brokers can do.
