Insurance Journey: Amy Morrison

ON THE SEARCH FOR THE NEXT GENERATION

I started working in insurance at a very young age, while I was still in high school. I had decided to undertake a traineeship program in the Claims Department at QBE Mercantile Mutual, as my aunt worked there at the time. I was just 15 years old and I was working at QBE Mercantile Mutual during the day, while finishing off senior studies in the evenings. The traineeship was originally a two-year program, but I was so hungry to learn that I actually completed it in nine months.

Eventually, I moved from claims to underwriting and then into insurance broking. I’m an incredibly ambitious person, and really aspired to a role where I could get hands-on with clients and continually learn from them. In underwriting, the majority of relationships you build is with brokers. In broking, your network is simply enormous, and you get to learn so much about industries you’ve never even heard of.

I can open up my calendar right now and tell you that today, I’ll be meeting with a beauty salon owner, an accountant, and the CEO of a financial services firm. Tomorrow, I’ll be sitting in front of the CEO of an Indigenous healthcare provider. This job requires us to be chameleons, to develop relationships with so many people from different walks of life – and that’s the beauty of it.

A huge part of my portfolio consists of Indigenous communities and not-forprofit organisations across Queensland and NSW. As someone with an Indigenous heritage, working closely with Indigenous communities has given me a better understanding of my own culture.

Another speciality of mine is property developers. I have a strong passion for town planning, architecture, and I love that my work intersects with impactful things like progress and driving economic growth.

THE PATH AHEAD

I have actually just opened my own business – Taylor Made Insurance Services, which officially launched on 4 July 2022. As of the date of this interview, it has been seven business days since I launched my business, and every day has been absolutely flat out.

I come from a family of entrepreneurs, so naturally I’ve always aspired to become a business owner and run my own brokerage. To have that autonomy, and to be able to shape my business into something I can be proud of, is something that I’ve always been passionate about.

My goal is to build my business to a point where it can be self-sustaining. I hope to one day be able to work and travel around the country in my bus with my laptop.

THE NEXT GENERATION OF TALENT

Getting the next generation of talent into our industry is absolutely the biggest challenge we have on our hands. Looking back, I was very fortunate to have started my career in an era where traineeship roles in insurance companies were widely available to young people.

Administrative tasks such as faxing, filing, archiving, working in reception or fast-tracking claims gave you the opportunity to learn things we take for granted now – things like office life, or human behaviour in a professional setting.

Nowadays, I think it’s much harder to train a junior broker from ‘go’ to ‘whoa’. It’s quite challenging to develop young talent, because there’s no longer an abundance of those junior roles anymore. Many young people coming into the industry are thrown straight into the deep end, before they’ve had the chance to develop their life skills.

As an experienced broker, I’m now training new starters from day one by explaining: “What is insurance?” This is why I’ve participated in the NIBA Mentoring Program as a mentor – I just think that young brokers really need support and encouragement, and to know that someone outside of their workplace really believes in them.

But beyond training is the big, milliondollar question that our industry needs to answer: how do we find the next generation of insurance brokers and bring them on board? These people aren’t on LinkedIn yet, many won’t even have a job.

We can visit universities, TAFE or high schools for open days, but talking to 18-year-olds about the appeal of insurance is really not sexy. There is a huge amount of knowledge held by leaders in our industry who may be retiring over the next few years. We need to pass on this knowledge – so that the next generation of brokers can continue the good work and keep our industry thriving. 

FOUR QUICK QUESTIONS

What’s something most people don’t know about you?

I’m a country girl – I hail from a long line of cattle farmers. You can take a girl out the of country but you can never take the country out of the girl.

What is your favourite film?

Any movie with Tom Hanks in it!

What do you like to read in your spare time?

True Australian crime and Australian biographies. My favourite book is Sidney Kidman’s story Cattle King.

What’s your favourite food?

Mum’s home cooking.

Share your insurance journey. Email editor@niba.com.au