The latest edition of Insurance News magazine is being mailed out this week, and with it we’ll be celebrating a significant milestone.

Once the magazine is in the hands of subscribers around Australia, we will make it available online.
 
It has previously been a subscriber-only print-only publication, and will always still be available in print form for those established and future subscribers who prefer it.

The decision to take the magazine online follows closely behind the launch last week of our new Tuesday-to-Friday daily edition of insuranceNEWS.com.au, which has been very well received by subscribers.

This new service complements our comprehensive Monday afternoon edition, which remains Insurance News’ “flagship” production. 

Much has changed in the 10 years we have been building the Insurance News brand. We now have about 26,000 subscribers to our Monday online news, and 9000 magazine subscribers – numbers that make them the most-read publications of their type in Australia by a very wide margin.

The decision to develop the online magazine option and daily online news service didn’t come without a lot of research and a fair amount of debate, and the feedback to these initiatives in the reader survey we conducted over the past month has reassured us they are positive steps.

Our reasons for the changes are both practical and economic. While we have no intention of limiting the magazine’s print run, the costs associated with printing and mailing continue to rise. Online production has the potential to raise readership levels for minimal cost. 

Then there’s the fact many readers have told us they simply prefer the flexibility and convenience of reading from an electronic device such as a tablet or computer – a trend that’s challenging the print publishing business around the world. 

Our decision to go with the global flow reflects our determination to keep the magazine’s circulation growing. Advertising is Insurance News’ major revenue source, and our priority has always been to provide our industry advertisers with the largest possible readership. They will also now have greater flexibility to devise innovative and exciting campaigns for Insurance News readers across a range of media.

There’s another, more incidental, benefit. Our subscribers include an enthusiastic cohort of overseas readers – many of them expatriates – who will now be able to read the magazine without having to pay for mailing.

Over the next few months we will make all previous editions of Insurance News magazine available online, providing a historical perspective to the issues we have covered over the past nine years. 

Insurance News magazine has always been praised by readers for the in-depth perspectives it brings to issues we’ve covered more briefly in the online news. We are looking forward to bringing those industry insights to an even wider audience.

With a wider range of productions to increase the effectiveness of Insurance News, we will concentrate for now on bedding in our new services.

But I’m sure we won’t be stopping here. The insurance world is changing rapidly, and so are new and exciting ways to communicate that change. 

Terry McMullan

Publisher, Insurance News