Insurance has always been an industry shaped by change. But right now, that change feels like it’s accelerating in every direction at once. A 219% increase in weather-related claims volumes year-on-year1. Nearly $9 billion in natural disaster losses across New Zealand in just three years2. Reinsurance costs up 136% since FY233. Customers are more price-sensitive than ever, all while AI, digital disruption and new competitors rapidly reshape the insurance landscape.
For brokers, that creates a more demanding environment than ever before. Customers need more guidance, context and advocacy. And they increasingly need help navigating difficult conversations around affordability, resilience and risk.
That was the backdrop to Vero’s 2026 Broker Roadshows. Held across Wellington, Auckland, Christchurch and Hamilton, the roadshows brought our leadership team back face-to-face with brokers from around the country for the first time in several years. We were back to reconnect, listen, and have honest conversations about where insurance is heading and how Vero is responding.
This year’s theme was Accelerate: Backing brokers in a changing world. That word “accelerate” was very deliberate. Acceleration, for us, reflects the reality that the environment around brokers is changing faster than ever before. Risk is accelerating. Customer expectations are accelerating. Technology adoption is accelerating. And the insurance industry itself is having to evolve quickly alongside it. For us, acceleration means reducing friction, being consistent, and giving brokers the confidence and tools they need to operate in a more complex market.
Across the roadshows, three key themes consistently came through: Understanding Risk, Advocacy and Partnership. Those priorities underpin where we’re investing, where we’re leading, and how we believe we can continue backing brokers for the long term.
The environment is changing faster than ever
Jimmy Higgins opened the roadshows by grounding the discussion in the realities brokers are navigating every day. While parts of the market are beginning to bottom out after years of steep premium increases, brokers are now balancing affordability concerns, rising customer expectations, increasing competition, and rapidly evolving risk - all at once. And while technology is accelerating change across the industry, Jimmy reinforced something we feel strongly about at Vero: the role of brokers is becoming more important.
In uncertain environments, customers need trusted advice and advocacy. That’s why one of the strongest messages throughout the roadshows was our commitment to the intermediary channel. That commitment shapes how we invest, how we structure our business, and where we’re heading next.
A global industry under pressure
To help brokers zoom out from the day-to-day and look at the bigger forces shaping insurance globally, we brought in leading economist Shamubeel Eaqub and Frederik Mayeres, Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG).
There are significant structural changes reshaping insurance globally: climate volatility, economic uncertainty, the rise of AI, increasing competition from MGAs, and rapidly evolving customer expectations. But one of the clearest takeaways was that while technology is transforming insurance, it is also increasing the value of advice. As customers become more self-directed and digital experiences become the norm, brokers are increasingly being pushed further up the value chain - away from transactional interactions and towards deeper strategic guidance, risk advice and advocacy.
That rang true with Shamubeel’s expertise on the New Zealand economy. He spoke about the pace of technological change, rising financial pressure, geopolitical instability and what he described as a broader erosion of trust across society. In an environment increasingly defined by uncertainty, he argued that relationships and judgement become more valuable.
One of the strongest observations from Shamubeel was that brokers cannot afford to become “vending machines” for policies. Instead, the brokers who thrive will be those who become genuine partners to their customers - helping them understand risk, navigate uncertainty, make smarter decisions and build resilience over time.
Importantly, neither speaker framed technology or AI as the enemy of brokers. If anything, the opposite. The consistent message was that while digital tools will continue to automate simple transactions, they will also make human expertise, advocacy and trusted relationships even more important in complex moments. And in a world accelerating this quickly, that human element may become one of the broker channel’s biggest competitive advantages.
Understanding risk in New Zealand
Sacha Cowlrick then brought those macro trends into sharp focus locally. One of the clearest themes from her sessions was that risk in New Zealand is increasingly visible, measurable and concentrated.
Vero’s modelling indicates average weather-related annual losses could increase by between 19% and 26% by 2050. But weather risk is highly concentrated. Less than 1.5% of coastal properties are projected to account for all coastal inundation losses, while fewer than 2% of inland properties are linked to 30% of all flood losses.
For us, this is exactly why understanding risk more deeply matters. We’re investing heavily into data, modelling and property-level insights, and tapping into our expertise as part of Suncorp Group, so we can price more accurately and provide greater consistency, so we are protecting all Kiwis across New Zealand.
Advocacy beyond individual policies
Advocacy has been a significant priority for us at Vero. Many of the challenges facing insurance today are bigger than any one insurer or policy. Questions around resilience, infrastructure, land use, climate adaptation and affordability affect the long-term sustainability of insurance across New Zealand.
That’s why Vero and Suncorp New Zealand are actively engaging with government and global reinsurers. This work matters because it directly affects long-term capacity, pricing and accessibility for customers - and ultimately brokers’ ability to continue placing business confidently into the future.
Partnership through action
Our partnership with brokers underpins Vero entirely as a business. That’s why a major focus over the last few years has been investing in the areas that matter most to brokers day-to-day: improving service, simplifying processes, strengthening connectivity and making it easier to work with us in an increasingly complex market.
Throughout the roadshows, we spoke about the significant transformation happening across Vero’s systems, platforms and operating model, all designed to create a more connected experience for brokers and customers alike.
That includes end-to-end Consumer and Business teams designed to improve accountability and reduce handoffs, investment into CRM capability to create a more connected customer view, and the continued rollout of VeroVantage to give brokers greater visibility and control across their workflows.
We also shared how we’re continuing to invest in claims capability, digital lodgement and automation to remove friction and create faster, more seamless experiences for brokers and customers. That includes work underway on a live claims tracker to provide brokers with greater visibility across the claims journey, alongside faster processing for simpler motor claims.
But importantly, one of the strongest themes throughout the roadshows was that trust and consistency matter enormously. Again and again, our leadership team spoke about the importance of showing up consistently for brokers, particularly when market conditions become more difficult or uncertain. That means maintaining a broad appetite, continuing to invest for the long term, and being a stable, predictable partner brokers can rely on through both hard and soft market cycles.
Because while the industry around us is changing rapidly, Vero’s commitment to the broker channel hasn’t changed at all.
1Vero claims data
2https://www.icnz.org.nz/industry/cost-of-natural-disasters/
3Vero NZ CRD 2025
