Insurers need to develop liability lines that meet the concerns of local businesses, the Australian Professional Indemnity Group national conference has been told.

Zurich General Insurance Australia and New Zealand CEO Shane Doyle told the conference in Sydney last week that reputation risk is now the top concern of Australian and NZ businesses, with the “traditional” insurable risks of far less concern.

Quoting the annual Aon Australasian Risk Management Benchmark Survey, he said the top five challenges named by risk managers in Australia and NZ are brand and image, liquidity, human resources, systems and information management.

“The challenge for us if we want to be relevant for our insureds is to find solutions for them in their top five risks – the things that keep them awake at night,” Mr Doyle said.

He says the risks traditionally covered by insurers rank down the list in terms of importance, with business interruption at number 9, liability at 12, environmental at 15, physical assets at 17 and natural disasters at 18.

“Reputations can be made or broken in an hour in cyberspace and [the story] doesn’t even have to be true,” he said. “Reputation is a very difficult thing to insure, but what we can be looking at is ways to help our insureds mitigate against brand and reputational damage.”

Mr Doyle believes reputational risk is also a top concern of insurance companies after this year’s natural catastrophes. “We have become more unpopular than the most unpopular government in Australia.”

He says the New Zealand industry’s reputation has also suffered, due to the time taken by the NZ Earthquake Commission to process claims. “Again as a marketplace we have failed to deliver at that most crucial time when we are asked to deliver.”