Niche player Guild Insurance has set off on an expansion strategy using brokers.

Owned by the Pharmacy Guild of Australia, Melbourne-based Guild Insurance has already had a “soft launch” for the strategy in Victoria, with 30 brokers in the state recently “selected” to do business with it.

GM David Brown says Guild will expand its intermediary-based approach into “NSW and beyond” next year.

While Guild has previously limited its commercial and personal lines products to professionals in the medical and pharmacy areas, Mr Brown says the product line has been revamped to cater to a wider range of customers.

“We’ve been successful with the affinity model, and we simply want to develop the market we operate in, which is mainly made up of professionals,” he told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

Mr Brown says Guild has restructured its back-end processes “to free up our service people more”.

As Guild continues to gear up for expansion, actuary Paul Cassidy has been named as the company’s new Head of Underwriting. A former Head of Product and Underwriting at CGU, Mr Cassidy was most recently National Manager Portfolio and Risk Management for medical defence insurer Avant. He will join Guild next month.