New forms of insurance intermediation and new technologies are changing the landscape for brokers and eroding the value of advice, according to AIMS GM Martin McAvenna.

He told the group’s annual conference in Adelaide last week that an “age of new intermediaries” is evolving, in which new technologies provide easier access points for insurance buyers and make it possible for them to “shift their positions around brokers”.

“For a long time there was relative stability in the broking business,” Mr McAvenna told the 468 delegates from broker groups Austbrokers and IBNA.

“The battle for commercial clients was between brokers. But now there’s a much wider transactional world. It’s no longer just about us as the intermediaries of choice.”

Mr McAvenna says the recent One Big Switch campaign facilitated by News Ltd newspapers – for which the publisher received a commission – was “cheap insurance positioned as journalism. What this nasty little campaign has done is headline the public perception that insurance is just another product – buy one, get one free.

“Perhaps it doesn’t matter for the punters who paid up for a newspaper promise of cheap insurance. But it does matter for the thousands of businesses that need the experience and qualified advice of their brokers.”

He says business now operates in an environment that “reinforces the general notion that you can just do it yourself. In the age of the new intermediaries, our chief proposition is advice. Brokers forget that at their peril.”