Geelong born and bred Mitchell Wight, Senior Broking Executive at Integral Insurance Services, pictured, is valued by clients as an advocate who is in their corner.

What was your “in” to the industry?

My dad was in premium funding, that was my first introduction to insurance. There was a traineeship with a local brokerage which I applied for and managed to get. I have a twin brother and they actually ended up employing both of us and we ended up in insurance at the same time.

It was one job and they turned it into two, so it is funny how it all plays out. He is a broker in Sydney now. We are identical – 99.8% – so the Steadfast conference was very interesting. I ran into a lot of people who thought I was him, and Tim ran into a lot of people who thought he was me.

I was approached to join Integral three years ago and I haven’t looked back. I have progressed to being a senior account manager and then into a stakeholder looking to grow the business together.

How is your approach different?

We manage all of our client claims for them with our own in-house claims team. I get very hands-on in helping our clients, being able to provide them with advice at claims time and add that benefit of an advocate to help them against the insurer.

That probably happens on a daily basis, so we get feedback from clients that they love having someone in their corner that they can rely on to assist them when push comes to shove. That is a really rewarding part.

I really enjoy helping people, whether that is the mums with home & contents to the big corporates, I am a Jack of all trades and help everyone. Being a country broker based out of Geelong we help basically every type of business, whether that is an SME or corporate stuff, we get involved in it all.

We do a lot in hospitality. Being able to guide and help our clients through that difficult time has been quite humbling, seeing the way people have been able to shift and pivot to find ways to keep their business trading has been inspiring and being involved in that process to help them through has been really rewarding.

We do a bit in construction, they have their own issues around affordability and increases in materials and insolvency, so they have their problems. We are quite diverse and see all the different challenges different industries are facing at the moment.

Most insurance at the moment has got its challenges. Affordability is the main issue. A lot of clients are either taking increased deductibles to make it more affordable and just taking the risk on themselves, or there are some clients that have uninsured aspects to their business, which is difficult.

How do you build team and community camaraderie?

We have got an amazing team and we have grown together over the last three or four years, it has been amazing since I have been involved. It’s a really great bunch of people, like-minded, we seem to attract some really good people to our business and I just really love that aspect which makes it enjoyable to come to work.

We like to be able to give back to the community. At Christmas time we wrapped presents together for the Barwon Child, Youth & Family Foster a Future appeal as a team, we were a major sponsor. You hear some amazing stories around the situations that young children are put into.

I am a coach of a local AFL club and we like to get involved there. I have retired (from playing) now – too many ankle surgeries for me so I thought it was time to hang the boots up – but I am still involved. I coach on Saturdays, the guys vary in age from 19 to 45, and I train two nights a week.

We have got a really tightknit team and a really good culture so it is awesome to work with the people that we have. We all love helping clients and each other, so it is a great place to work.