Ups and downs: Andrew Arcuri says COVID has been a rollercoaster
Broking in the time of COVID Brokers in locked-down Victoria and NSW say they’ve been robbed of meaningful connection with their clients. So much has changed, but they see it all as a passing phase By Miranda Maxwell
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eflated is a word I hear quite regularly,” says Melbourne broker Andrew Arcuri. He shares the feeling of millions of east coast Australians whose lives in lockdown have seemed empty and interminable. Mr Arcuri, the Managing Director of AT Arcuri & Associates, is describing day-to-day life for brokers working under suffocating stay-at-home orders, border closures and other restrictions on movement and personal freedoms. His team has only been together in the office twice since March last year. And while the vaccination drive is providing a light at the end of the COVID tunnel, Mr Arcuri says confidence about the finish line is fragile. “There is light but we are not there yet,” he tells Insurance News. “People can see it but I don’t know if everyone is feeling it. “The last 18 months has been a rollercoaster. There are periods where people have been down, periods where they have been a lot better. At the moment there is hope.” He says true confidence won’t return until there is real certainty that states won’t impose more lockdowns. It could take until spring next year “to fully see everybody feeling free in the sunshine”. ”It may not be until mid-next year that everyone is feeling confident enough to expand services and build things up.
“If the industry as a whole is not growing, then the supporting industries around it can’t. So until such a time as the economy rolls back out and people have confidence to grow and restaurants have confidence that they can order food or open up that second location, and people with their side hustles feel confident they can expand… “Everyone is in a holding pattern. Once we get to a point where there is confidence that we are not going to get another lockdown, I am sure they will start investing again.” Business at Mr Arcuri’s brokerage is “holding up”. His team members stay in touch via regular virtual meetings, but he says frustration levels are higher than they were in previous lockdowns. “Clients and underwriters have shown understanding that things are a lot harder working from home – so far,” he says. “At the moment clients are accepting of it, but I am waiting for that pendulum to swing. We are a service industry and the service needs to be met.” Mr Arcuri has many commercial property owner clients who he says are “feeling the pinch”, and he has been kept busy finding cover for vacant properties. “Some industries are doing really well out of the pandemic and some are gone.” The COVID challenges are being dealt with at the same time as clients with
hard-to-place risks face a risk-averse market – with premium rises that are “tough to explain”. “The market is a lot tighter now,” Mr Arcuri says. “It doesn’t help when insurers are exiting markets. It just means that whoever is left can charge what they want.” He has avoided blowback about premium rises and exclusions by avoiding generalisations. “Let’s talk about your policy, what works with your policy and how you react. That comes back to the insurance broker’s role, which is to provide specific advice as opposed to general advice.” The times may be tough, but Arma Insurance Brokers at Maitland in NSW’s Hunter Valley has done pretty nicely, thank you. The brokerage, which is part of the Community Broker Network, has gross written premium of around $10 million a year and has grown about 18% in the past 12 months. But while Managing Director Amanda Morris says things are going along quite well, that’s not the case with many clients. “We are having some hard conversations with clients that are suffering financially, and with the uncertainty of what’s happening in the future,” she tells Insurance News. “There is no clear goalpost so it makes it really difficult for them to plan. That’s
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October/November 2021
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