Broker profile: a chip off the old block

Albany-based Luke Cameron, pictured, has not looked back since following his father and cousins into broking on discovering life as a tradie was not for him.

What brought you into the broking industry?

I grew up in Albany WA, which is 450km south of Perth, a little coastal town surrounded by lots of farming communities. After school I tried multiple different trades and found out it wasn’t for me.

My father had a brokerage in town and said “why don’t you give insurance a crack?” In between juggling labouring and whatnot, I studied and moved into broking and have now moved up to taking over the business. I have four cousins at different brokerages across WA.

There is no looking back, I am really happy with the move I made and I love the industry and the relationships that you create. The end result, whether it is a saving or a claim outcome, is very rewarding.

If you split our portfolio up, it would be predominantly rural followed by commercial, marine, domestic – a little bit of everything really. You cannot specialise in any one product because Albany is surrounded by local businesses that support the small town, so we have got quite a diverse range of insurance products.

There is a lot more of a personal aspect involved in being a country broker compared to a corporate broker. In some circumstances a friendship is created. All our reviews are done face-to-face – we rarely use Skype for any of our insurance business, it is all done over the coffee table at the farmer’s house or here.

We have definitely seen considerable growth in the past two years, through not only organic growth but a lot of new clientele as well as people move to the area, on the back of a brokerage that provides trusted professional service. It is going well.

How are your clients tracking?

They have had a year like no other. The rural aspect of our portfolio has had an incredible 12 months on the back of a really good season rainfall-wise and a huge spike in grain costs, along with input costs being very low – fertilizer and your fuels.

South of Perth has probably had the best year ever. It was incredible.

Most of our clients are going fine. We are very fortunate that in WA we dodged a lot of the covid dramas of the past two years.

Now they are having to prepare their budget a little bit differently because input costs have gone up anywhere between 100-150%, so taking a bit more of a conservative approach coming into this season and perhaps diversifying some of their programs

Insurance is still a very hard market and being south of the 26th parallel where the risk is considerably less, we are still paying for the rest of the state’s price rises. So if you look at WA as a whole, last year cyclone Seroja had such an effect on the rural market, so south of Perth is actually paying for the loss as well.

We tried to have a word with a couple of our rural insurers at the start of this year to see if we could get any relief from that aspect and set a different rate platform for the rural market south of Perth, but unfortunately it couldn’t be done so there are farmers out there paying a 25% increase and they have nothing to do with Seroja and are thousands of kilometres away. That is pretty tough.

But as long as we’re doing all we can for our clients and making sure it is the best option out there, we are doing our job.

How do you spend your time when not at work?

I am right into my mountain bike riding, I love AFL, surfing and I enjoy camping as well. My little brother plays for the Pies (Collingwood) so catching them play on weekends too.

I can’t really sit still. I am getting married in January and building a house and renovating an onsite caravan in Bremer Bay – it is all happening at the moment, lots of little renovation projects here and there.

My partner is from London so her family are going to be able to make a trip over here after three years which will be pretty special. We met through mutual friends, she has a degree in agriculture and was over here doing some part-time work experience and never went home because she met the man of her dreams! I now live on the farm she manages while building and couldn’t be happier.

I am building a house just out of Albany which is pretty challenging, getting your hands on materials. Some of the prices have gone up materially so we try and do what we can with what we have got.