NZ manager reveals expansion plans for MECON Insurance

Big potential

“We’re not a huge player in the New Zealand market, so we’re looking to really ramp up in the next 12 months,” said the Melbourne-based manager who looks after MECON’s NZ business. “At the moment, we do material damage mainly on single projects; we don’t do too much in the liability space, but we’re looking to make a big push in that market to enable us to write the material damage alongside the liability.

“We merged with UAA (Underwriting Agencies of Australia) in July last year. The UAA Group is well established in New Zealand in the plant & equipment space, whereas we are purely construction. We’re looking to work alongside our UAA colleagues to grow our business in NZ.”

At present, MECON runs its Kiwi operations from Australia, with a view to getting local people onboard as the underwriting agency expands.

“The aim for us is to grow to a size where we can then recruit and have boots on the ground in New Zealand,” Denney, whose camp sees a big opportunity, told Insurance Business. “The challenge for us is we don’t have anybody in NZ, and we recognise that. For us, the next step in our evolution is to get people actually based in New Zealand on the ground.

“We’ve been in Australia for 17 years now, so we’ve got the brand awareness behind us in Australia – not so much in New Zealand [where] we’re still quite a young insurer. This will be the seventh year we’ve been writing business in NZ, and we haven’t scratched the surface yet.”

For Denney, there is massive potential, given that “there’s construction going on everywhere” in New Zealand and the fact that, as a specialist construction insurer, all MECON writes is construction.

“It’s really untapped as far as we’re concerned,” he said. “We’ve grown massively in Australia in the past 17 years, from a standing start, and we’re hoping to replicate that success in New Zealand.”

Brokers’ role

As a purely intermediated business, MECON acknowledges the important role of brokers.

“They’re crucial for us,” declared Denney. “Without brokers, we don’t have a business. For us, the brokers are our business… That’s really what we’re looking to do over the next 12 months, is to get into NZ and build those relationships even further.

“Because construction is quite a niche market, a lot of brokers don’t do much in construction, so it’s down to the underwriter to give them the product knowledge that they may need; also at claims time, to guide them through the claims process.”

For now, said the NZ manager, high on the agenda is getting the liability wording rolled out.

“We can’t wait to get our standalone liability wording launched, which we will write in conjunction with the material damage,” shared Denney. “Once we’ve got that ready to go, myself and our chief executive [Glenn Ross, whose first home is New Zealand] will be coming out to NZ, looking to do a big push. We’d like to think by the end of the second quarter of this year it’ll be up and running. That’s really the catalyst for us to make a push into the market.

“We’re really excited by the prospects and the opportunity in New Zealand. We have got a very good brand in Australia, so we’re really looking to push that this year and work alongside our colleagues at UAA who’ve got those relationships already, and then we can offer that combined plant & equipment and construction offering.”

He added: “We’ve got good relationships with a lot of brokers, but we’re really keen to get over and learn more about them and learn how we can work together.”

A wholly owned subsidiary of UAA Group, MECON Insurance is manned by around 60 people and has offices in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Perth.