Here’s something most insurance brokers would never say out loud: nobody actually wants insurance.
Not really.
No regional business owner woke up this morning thinking, “I’d love to spend a few hours reviewing my policy schedule.” No farmer has ever sat down at the kitchen table excited about their renewal. No aged care manager has put “read the PDS” at the top of their to-do list with any real enthusiasm.
And yet, the insurance industry keeps writing content as though people do. As though the product itself is the point.
It isn’t.
What people actually want, what they’re really trying to do, is run their business well. Grow it. Protect what they’ve built. Make smart decisions with limited time and limited resources. And get back to the actual work of running a farm, a business, a service, a community.
Insurance is just one of the tools they hire to help them get there.
The job your insurance is actually doing
Clayton Christensen, the Harvard business strategist, had a useful idea: people don’t buy products. They hire them to do a job.
When you think about it through that lens, the job regional business owners are really hiring insurance to do looks something like this:
Give me the confidence to make bigger decisions and take on bigger opportunities.
Protect me from a single event destroying what I’ve spent years building.
Keep the bank, the board and my partners comfortable that I’m managing the business responsibly.
Make sure that if something goes wrong, I’m not navigating it alone.
Let me get on with running my business without being exposed to risks I don’t even know exist.
That’s a very different job description to finding the cheapest option and hoping it holds up when it matters.
And it’s the difference that shapes everything about how good insurance advice should work.
Where a broker actually earns their place
A transactional insurance experience – “compare, click, buy” – might technically produce a policy. But it won’t necessarily do the job.
Because doing the job properly requires someone who understands your business. Not just the assets on a schedule, but how you operate, what would genuinely hurt you, where your exposure sits, what you’re planning next and how that changes your risk profile.
It requires someone who reads the fine print before something goes wrong, not after.
Someone who can pick up the phone to an underwriter on your behalf, who knows which insurer actually pays claims well in your sector, and who will sit beside you in a dispute rather than disappearing when things get complicated.
That’s what a good broker does. Not sell you a product, but help you run your business with less risk, more confidence and better information.
What this looks like in practice
For a farming operation, it might mean structuring cover that genuinely reflects the realities of a multi-enterprise property; not a default package that misses half the exposure.
For a not-for-profit, it might mean understanding that volunteer activities, board decisions and service delivery carry different liabilities than a standard commercial business; and making sure each one is covered properly.
For a trade or construction business, it might mean catching the underinsurance gap before a major equipment loss exposes it; rather than finding out at claim time that the sums insured haven’t moved in five years.
In every case, the job isn’t the policy. The job is protecting the business and the people behind it.
The question worth asking
If you look at your current insurance arrangements and ask honestly “is this actually doing the job I need it to do?” what would the answer be?
Not whether you have insurance. Most businesses do. But whether it’s structured correctly for the way your business actually operates. Whether the sums insured reflect current values. Whether the gaps have been properly identified. Whether someone genuinely understands your business and is watching out for your interests.
That’s the conversation worth having. And it’s the one we’re always ready to start.
Breakwater Insurance Brokers works with regional businesses across South West Victoria and beyond. If you’d like to talk about whether your insurance is actually doing its job, we’d love to hear from you.
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