Insurance broker software in Australia: renewals, the 2027 Code and AI

What does a broker’s year actually involve?

A general insurance broker’s year is a renewal calendar with new business, claims and compliance layered on top. Most of the book renews every 12 months, so the work is cyclical and predictable, which is exactly what makes it suited to automation.

A typical commercial account cycles through:

1. Renewal preparation. Request updated information from the client, check for changes in turnover, sites, fleet or staff.
2. Market approach. Send submissions to incumbent and alternative insurers, through portals, a trading platform or email.
3. Comparison and recommendation. Compare premiums, limits, excesses and wordings, then recommend.
4. Placement. Bind, invoice, collect premium and issue documents and certificates of currency.
5. Mid term. Endorsements, new assets, certificate requests.
6. Claims. Lodge, advocate and chase until settled.

Steps 1 to 3 eat most of the hours and are where data is retyped between systems. Steadfast says its network brokers place around $26 billion in gross written premium a year, which gives a sense of how much of that work flows through broking systems.

This page is about distribution. For the insurer’s side of claims and documents, see our page on insurance claims automation.

Broking systems and network platforms: what can you change?

The broking system and the network platform are products you configure, not code you own, so custom work has to sit beside them and connect through whatever export or API they allow.

System	Provider	Role
WinBEAT NEXT, Sunrise Exchange, Evolution, OneOffice	Ebix Australia	Broking and agency management systems
INSIGHT	Steadfast	Cloud policy management platform
Steadfast Client Trading Platform (SCTP)	Steadfast	One question set sent to multiple insurers for quotes, bind and renewal, running since 2009
Steadfast Apps	Steadfast	Launched in 2024 as quote, bind and pay; in April 2026 Steadfast announced it will bring SCTP and INSIGHT into one system with CRM and documents
Insurer portals	Each insurer	Quotes and binding for products outside the platform

Two practical points follow. If you belong to a network, its roadmap may already include what you want, as Steadfast’s April 2026 announcement shows, so ask before you scope a build. And platforms that cover the insurers on their panel still leave the rest of the market in individual portals, which is where retyping persists.

How do you run renewals without retyping?

A renewal pipeline pulls policies due from the broking system, starts each renewal early enough to meet the Code’s notice period, and tracks every insurer response in one place.

What it does, week by week:

• Lists policies renewing in the next 90 days, by account manager.
• Sends the client a prefilled renewal questionnaire and records the answers once.
• Generates submissions for each insurer from those answers, in each insurer’s format.
• Tracks quotes received, outstanding and declined.
• Builds the comparison table from the quotes, for the broker to review.
• Flags any renewal where notice to the client is at risk of falling inside 28 days.

The last item matters from 1 January 2027. The 2027 Code raises the minimum notice before a policy renews from 14 days to 28, which pulls the whole renewal timeline forward by two weeks. A pipeline built around fixed lead times makes that change a setting rather than a scramble.

What will the 2027 Code ask your systems to show?

The 2027 Insurance Brokers Code of Practice, launched by NIBA on 19 October 2026, takes effect on 1 January 2027 and replaces the 2022 Code. It grows from 12 sections to 14. NIBA’s summary of the changes reads like a software requirements list:

Code change	What your system needs
Minimum renewal notice doubles from 14 to 28 days	Renewal start dates and notice sent dates, with alerts
New section on how client records are kept	Consistent client file, retention rules, access history
Any client can ask what the broker is paid and get a dollar answer	Commission and fees per policy, retrievable on request
A client’s difficult circumstances can be recorded once, with consent	A consented vulnerability flag visible to all staff, with care over who sees detail
After a declared catastrophe, contact affected clients and offer claims help	Search the book by location and policy type, log contact
Conflicts of interest gathered in one section	Conflict register linked to clients and placements

Read the Code and NIBA’s side by side comparison of the 2022 and 2027 versions before you design anything, and let your compliance lead set the rules.

What do the design and distribution obligations require you to record?

When you distribute retail products, Part 7.8A of the Corporations Act requires reasonable steps so distribution is consistent with the target market determination, and records of distribution information. ASIC’s RG 274, issued in September 2024, sets out the distributor obligations:

• Don’t distribute unless you reasonably believe a TMD has been made, or isn’t required.
• Take reasonable steps so distribution is consistent with the most recent TMD.
• Notify the issuer of a significant dealing outside the TMD as soon as practicable, within 10 business days.
• Keep complete and accurate records of distribution information, including the number of complaints and anything the issuer specifies in the TMD.

In software terms, that means a target market check recorded at quote or bind, a complaints register tagged by product, and reports in the format each issuer asks for.

Do you need to record consent for commissions?

If you give personal advice to a retail client about general insurance and receive a commission, you now need the client’s informed consent before accepting it, or the commission is conflicted remuneration. ASIC lists this change, from Part 5 of Schedule 1 to the Delivering Better Financial Outcomes Act, as starting on 9 July 2025. There are exemptions, including renewals of general insurance products where certain conditions are met, and where a business was bought and the original recipient had already obtained consent.

For your systems, that means three things: a consent record linked to each policy where personal advice was given, the date it was obtained, and the reason an exemption applies where you rely on one. Combined with the 2027 Code’s promise to tell any client what you are paid in dollars, commission data needs to be accurate per policy, not just in the monthly statement from each insurer.

How should claims advocacy be tracked?

A claims tracker gives the broker and the client one view of every open claim, its stage, what the insurer is waiting on and how long it has been. The 2027 Code’s emphasis on claims after catastrophes makes this more important. A client portal showing open claims, documents requested and the next step reduces calls, and the same data shows the broker which insurers are slow. Our customer portal guide covers the build choices.

Where does AI help with wordings and submissions?

AI is good at reading long policy wordings and lining them up clause by clause, so the broker can see where two policies differ. It is not good at deciding which difference matters to a particular client.

Useful tools:

• Wording comparison. Upload two or more wordings, get a table of differences in insuring clauses, exclusions, conditions, limits and definitions, each linked to the source clause. This is retrieval work of the kind our RAG guide describes.
• Submission drafting. Turn the renewal questionnaire and last year’s file into a draft submission for each insurer.
• Certificate requests. Read an incoming request and draft the certificate of currency for staff to check and send.

Every output is reviewed by the broker before a client sees it. Our AI document processing service covers extraction and review design.

What do typical builds cost?

These are indicative AUD market ranges, ex GST, not quotes. Expeed publishes $15,000 to $40,000 for simple internal tools and $40,000 to $150,000 for mid complexity systems such as portals.

Build	Includes	Indicative range
Renewal pipeline and reminder automation	Broking system export, questionnaires, submission generation, notice alerts	$20,000 to $50,000
AI policy wording comparison tool	Document ingestion, clause matching, comparison tables, broker review	$30,000 to $70,000
Client portal for certificates and claims	Logins, certificates on demand, claim status, document upload	$25,000 to $60,000

The biggest cost driver is your broking system’s data access. A clean API or scheduled export keeps a build near the low end; screen based workarounds push it up.

How AWLabs approaches broker builds

We start with a Development Consult to hear where renewals and claims stall. If a build looks worthwhile, a paid Discovery Audit tests your broking system’s export or API and maps your Code and DDO records, then you receive a fixed price Schedule of Work with three options: The Minimum, The Recommended and The Complete. Senior engineers lead every build, with updates every Tuesday and Friday, Sydney time.

AWLabs has not yet delivered a project for an insurance broker, and we hold no AFSL. This page is general information, not legal advice. See our wider finance and fintech work.