Actor Alex Haddad plans to revive the HIH name with a new brokerage business, hoping customers recall the insurance company’s early success rather than its corporate failure.

In its new incarnation, the name will be an abbreviation for Haddad Insurance Help, and a reference to the former company, he told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

“It did have some bad luck,” said Mr Haddad, who is best known for his role in the television comedy series Fat Pizza. “The new HIH Insurance Australia will be in operation later this year.”

HIH became Australia’s largest corporate collapse in 2001. A royal commission found the failure was due to factors including mismanagement, extravagance, underpricing of risk, under-reserving, the failure of its FAI acquisition and expansion overseas.

Mr Haddad, himself the centre of previous controversies, has registered the revived company name with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, but has hurdles to jump before his business can start operating.

He says he is obtaining a financial services licence and will then finalise underwriting and other arrangements before trading from offices in Melbourne and Sydney.

In 2014 Mr Haddad appeared on A Current Affair to deny he had sent threatening messages to The Voice contestant Sabrina Batshon and to field other complaints. The pair took out apprehended violence orders against each other, according to media reports. 

That year his investment home in Sydney was burgled and later burned down in suspicious circumstances.

In 2015 a Tamworth court ordered that he pay more than $220,000 in fines and compensation for asbestos breaches at a property in the region, the Northern Daily Leader reported.

Mr Haddad says the loss of film production content stored at the Sydney premises, among other items not covered by insurance, sparked an interest in entering the industry with his own business.

He says the company is already worth an estimated $60 million, before it has even started trading, based on a “discreet and confidential” overseas offer to purchase the business.

“It’s a Middle Eastern company, but I can’t go into further details,” he told insuranceNEWS.com.au.