Broker profile: 'at Marsh my career grew in leaps and bounds'

Marsh’s award-winning Managing Principal VP Maria Newman, based in Brisbane, says her career took off when she pivoted from accounting to placing insurance for Australian businesses with $500 million-plus annual turnover. 

Did you grow up in Queensland?  

I’m originally from Manila. I came here when I was quite young and grew up on the Gold Coast. I did my first degree there.  

Why did you pivot to broking from plans to do a CPA?  

I’ve been in the industry for about 22 years. 

I’m actually an accountant by trade, a real numbers person. I’ve always been really academic; always chose the hard maths subjects at high school and all the business subjects such as accounting, economics.  

I was in my final year around 2000 doing an accounting degree. I wanted to get some real-world work experience and a family friend had a small broking firm in Brisbane.  

I took on a role as their junior accountant for a couple of years. It’s a small firm of about five staff with SME-type clients. Accounting can be very internally focused – chiefly looking at computers and numbers. When they asked me to help with some of their broking work, I found that I really enjoyed the external and people aspects of the role. In particular I enjoyed talking to clients and dealing with the underwriters.  

I had a choice between pursuing a CPA or an MBA, and I thought that an MBA would give me a broader opportunity in the business world. BJS Insurance Brokers had just opened in Brisbane around 2006, and I was hired into a role there.  

They were looking after corporate-type clients, which I really enjoyed because I wanted to get exposure to more complex accounts. I also took on some of the audit and compliance work. 

How did you come to be at Marsh?  

In 2010, I got a phone call that Marsh was looking for an account executive and were interested in meeting me. 

I said ‘Yes, absolutely!’ Obviously I knew about Marsh and that it was a prestigious firm that can offer lots of opportunities. What also attracted me to Marsh was the career progression I’d heard women were experiencing in its Brisbane branch and its number of female leaders at the time. Another huge plus was the calibre of clients that I’d be looking after, which were ASX 200-plus clients.  

I always embrace challenge in terms of the complexity of clients I work with. So I was delighted to join Marsh, and I’ve had a number of formidable women mentors and role models here, as well as fantastic male sponsors and colleagues who supported my career progression. 

Within my first eight years at Marsh I received about four promotions, so I knew my decision to join was the right one. Being here has given me the opportunity for my career to grow in leaps and bounds. 

Tell us about your current role 

As a Managing Principal, I work in the Risk Management practice which is where our large corporate clients sit – clients with a minimum $300 million annual revenue. I absolutely love my role and it challenges me every day. 

Because I primarily have contact with my clients at C-suite level, I learn a lot from their business and people at a high level. I look after large corporate and listed clients as well as government-owned corporations.  

Inclusion and diversity are very close to my heart and I’m quite heavily involved in promoting these values at Marsh and initiatives that support them. As part of this, I co-chair Women and Allies (WAM) at our Marsh Colleague Resource Group. We meet every fortnight, and drive I&D initiatives throughout the year. Our main mission is to help promote and accelerate the progression of women at Marsh, help Marsh to be an employer of choice for women in the industry and equip our women colleagues to thrive. 

What are some of your proudest moments? 

Among my most meaningful times in my career has been being there for clients who were impacted by big natural disaster events like Cyclone Yasi and the Brisbane Floods of 2011 and 2022, where they might have a claim for up to $60 million, and getting those claims paid 100%. 

Another highlight is winning the NIBA Queensland Broker of the Year Award in 2017, I was very humbled to be nominated for that. 

How are clients faring?  

My portfolio is a mixed bag of infrastructure clients and public sector clients, government-owned corporations, as well as aged care, global retail and manufacturing. If there were a specialty it’s probably around retail and fast-moving consumer goods, because that’s where the majority of my portfolio has been. 

Everyone who needs insurance at the moment, including my clients, is facing immense challenges. Mounting pressure from inflation and supply chain disruptions is all increasing costs of doing business for our clients. Natural catastrophes are happening more frequently and more severely, and that’s on the back of tightening market conditions and reduced availability of insurance.  

You also have cyber risk, which is evolving faster than we could ever have imagined. You hear about high-profile cyber hacking incidents pretty much every day. 

My clients are all facing these challenges. In particular I’ve got some very high catastrophe-exposed clients around Brisbane and North Queensland. 

What do they seek from you?  

Overall, my clients are looking for more sustainable placement solutions. They’re factoring in long-term considerations to today’s placement decisions. So it’s not just about let’s take the cheapest option now, and worry about next year next year. It’s more ‘Is this panel of insurers that we have on the property sustainable? Are they going to be able to continue providing capacity for us in the near future? Is there any other insurer that we think we should include in our panel to futureproof our program?’. 

We’re also seeing more and more clients turn towards alternative risk transfer mechanisms such as parametric, and discretionary trust solutions which Marsh has the capacity to create and manage, and also captives. 

In general, there’s a lot more data-driven decision-making involved in the service, and clients look to us for expertise and innovation. You can’t place insurance anymore without making good use of data analysis and analytics. Our analytics team has been extremely busy. We look at what our clients have within their control that can help them navigate the market better. That includes data and analytics and making decisions around that. 

What are your interests outside work? 

I perform in musical theatre. I like to sing, dance and act, and watch it as well. I’ve just finished two shows this year – Sweet Charity and The Producers.  

When I’m involved in a show we rehearse three times a week, including pretty much all day on a Sunday. It’s amateur in terms of not being a paid gig but the quality is professional and we perform in big theatres with 500 seating capacity.  

I typically bring my laptop to rehearsals and when I’m not part of a particular scene or have some moments of downtime, I work. My cast-mates often find me working. That’s how I balance work with theatre. 

I love hearing about people in the industry who have a similar interest because I don’t come across them often enough. I invite them, I love an audience!