Three New Zealand brokerages recently became part of Steadfast Group's broker network, joining dozens of others that make up the more than 400 brokers across Australasia in this big grouping. One of the driving forces behind their decision to join Steadfast – and a key priority for all brokers – is very likely the access to data that can help inform business decisions by making sense of market movements, premiums and product lines.
Steadfast has been on a clear growth trajectory in New Zealand, with its Australasian broker network expanding from 402 to 421 brokers in the current financial year and about 70 brokerages are now operating across the country. While acquisition economics and back-office scale matter, one of the most strategically significant assets for joiners is Steadfast's doubling down on technology as a structural lever. This is integrating data and workflow tools including the SCTP platform and its "Insurebot" automation to shorten quote-to-bind times and create stickier broker-to-network engagement.
"Over 60% of our gross written premium now flows through the Insight Broking platform, and that gives us the ability to review across all product lines and industries, and to understand what premium rate movements are doing,” said Tim Mathieson (pictured), Steadfast's CEO Australasia Broking.
He said his firm has “incredible access to data.”
In fact, every sizeable broker and broker network operating in New Zealand is pouring money into analytics.
Aon recently unveiled Aon Broker Copilot, a proprietary AI and large-language-model platform that captures and structures data across all submissions, quoted or not, to give brokers "live intelligence of pricing, carrier appetite and market sentiment." After launching first with US property and London GBC property teams, it is being rolled out to additional business lines and geographies through 2025 and 2026, as part of Aon's US$1 billion 2024 commitment to turn data into real-time, actionable insight.
Marsh is marketing its Blue[i] analytics suite directly to New Zealand clients, pitched as a next-generation platform that delivers industry-leading data through an intuitive, interactive interface so leaders can make critical business decisions with confidence.
NZbrokers, backed by AUB Group and the country's largest broking collective with more than 45 members has built a group-wide platform. NZbrokers - JAVLN is designed to connect insurers, brokers and clients and give members access to Power BI that can visualise and analyse data at speed.
Timing is everything. New Zealand, like the rest of the global market, remains in a soft phase of the cycle. Marsh's Pacific head of risk management Scott Eccleston said in October 2025 there was "an abundance of capital" coming into the local market, with competition set to continue well into this year.
That is precisely the cycle where brokers can lose or make their margin – and where data turns from a nice-to-have into a decisive edge. As the Insurance Council of New Zealand's (ICNZ's) former CEO Tim Grafton has said, soft markets ask for a lot more work than hard ones and if you have good data and access to good modelling you have a good basis to establish the technical price for the risk being covered. Know your technical price, he warned, "so you don't get into a spiral race to the bottom." Brokers without that visibility are flying blind.
For Mathieson, that broader market context sharpens why a data-rich network matters beyond placement itself. In Steadfast's case, intelligence gathered from premium flows is being harnessed to guide brokers through this soft cycle.
When competition is fierce, capacity abundant and pricing slippery, the network that hands a broker the cleanest view of the market will increasingly be the one that keeps them – and their clients – on the right side of the cycle.
