Op-ed: The Profession's Promise to Clients

In his latest column, NIBA CEO Richard Klipin sets out how the Board weighed the voices of members, clients, regulators and the public in the draft Code, and why it landed where it did.

There is no such thing as a typical insurance broker.

NIBA speaks for more than 14,000 brokers. Among them are global multinationals with compliance teams larger than most member firms, listed entities answerable to shareholders, national broker networks, mid-tier firms, regional practices two hours from the nearest capital city, and sole practitioners who are the entire business. Their clients are equally varied. A broker in one office is placing cover for a national infrastructure operator. A broker in another is helping a café owner understand why her business interruption cover matters before she has ever made a claim.

A professional Code has to bind all of them. It has to mean the same thing, and be capable of being met, across the breadth and diversity of the profession.

That is the discipline the NIBA Board brought to the draft Insurance Brokers Code of Practice, and it is worth explaining what that discipline produced.

What a Code is For

Here is the part of the conversation we need to make sure we include.

A broker's obligations do not start with our Code. They start with the law. Every Code Subscriber holds, or operates under, an Australian Financial Services Licence, and the licensee's obligations under section 912A of the Corporations Act — to provide financial services efficiently, honestly and fairly — apply to everything this Code describes. That is the foundation.

Our Code sits on top of that foundation. It sets professional standards for the whole profession, and in defined areas it goes beyond what the law requires.

And on top of the Code sit the firms themselves. Many of our members have their own codes. Many have their own governing principles and operational procedures. Across 14,000 brokers you will find firms that have different operating models because the client types are different.

The law sets what is mandatory. The Code sets what is professional. The firm decides how it competes. A Code that reaches down into the third layer and prescribes a single way of doing business does not lift the profession, it flattens it instead. The role of a Code is to set boundaries and allow freedom within them, so the market can operate effectively for the clients it serves.

Balancing the Perspectives

The Board had to balance four different perspectives: the broker view, the client view, the public interest test as well as the view of public stakeholders.

Australia has spent the past few years reckoning with what layered regulation has cost. Complexity, confusion, and expense that lands, eventually, on the customer. The Government's own agenda is regulation that is fit for purpose rather than regulation for its own sake, and the business community has been clear that more rules are not automatically better rules.

Obligations stacked carelessly compound the problem rather than solving it. Every obligation a Code adds is an obligation someone administers, documents, trains for, and pays for. Where that cost buys a better outcome for clients, it is worth paying, and this draft asks the profession to pay it in several places. Where it does not, the client ends up funding a process that protects nobody.

The Board weighed simplification against complexity on every proposed change.

What the Evidence Said

Then there is the question of what clients actually experience, which is where this conversation should start rather than finish.

NIBA's Complexity to Clarity research asked advised clients — not consumers who buy direct, but the people who chose to work with a broker. 84% trust their broker to act in their best interest. 91% say their broker helped them achieve a better outcome. 95% consider their broker essential at claim time, and 98% of claims are ultimately resolved.

AFCA's Datacube shows broker complaints in FY2025–26 continuing a trend of staying below 1% year on year. The review builds on that record.

We read those numbers as an obligation. But they also tell you something about where the problem is and is not. Through two rounds of consultation, across every channel, the argument for expansion was made in principle rather than from demonstrated client harm.

Where the Board landed

The Code rewrite centres on strengthening consumer outcomes. When considered as a full package, the draft Code delivers on a number of key areas.

• Plain English: the Code has been rewritten so clients and brokers alike understand what to expect and what clients are entitled to.
• Remuneration disclosure extended: the obligation to disclose what a broker is paid — currently applying to retail clients — extends to strata (see below) and dollar disclosure on request to any client, irrespective of client or product type.
• Strata: automatic disclosure extends to all strata insurance, residential and commercial, disclosed to the owners corporation whether or not it is a retail client — the area where the consumer-protection evidence is most acute.
• Disclosure on request restored: any client — retail, wholesale, strata, or a business of any size — can ask what their broker is paid on any product arranged for them and be given the figure in dollars within a reasonable time, with no exceptions, thresholds or product carve-outs.
• Stronger protections for vulnerable clients, recognising that not every client comes to the table in the same position.
• Conflicts of interest obligations consolidated, clarified and aligned to ASIC's Regulatory Guide 181.
• A 28-day pre-renewal contact commitment, giving clients a defined window to review cover.
• Record-keeping elevated from good practice to a Code obligation.
• A minimum five-year independent review cycle locked in, so the Code keeps pace with the profession.

What happens now

The consultation is open until Friday 7 August, to members and to the public. We are targeting commencement on 1 January 2027.

Landing a revised Code is a challenge and it’s important that we weigh and balance different perspectives appropriately. On the hardest questions there was no answer available that would satisfy everyone, and a Code drafted to satisfy everyone would have satisfied no one. What I do expect is that the reasoning of where we landed is visible.

More than 14,000 brokers get up every day and go to work for their clients. This Code is for them, and for the people who rely on them.