You lodged the claim six weeks ago. The client has rung you four times, the builder wants an answer, and your inbox is a stack of “any update?” emails. None of it is moving, and the reason is sitting with the insurer, not with you. The client doesn’t see that. They see the person who sold them the policy.
If you’re an AR or principal who feels like you spend half your week chasing other people’s claims teams, the data backs up what you already suspect. This is structural, it’s getting worse, and you’re absorbing the fallout for decisions you don’t control.
The numbers say what your week already tells you
AFCA had its busiest year on record in 2025. The ombudsman received 111,373 complaints, up 14% on the year before, and consumers secured a record $643 million in compensation, more than double the previous year. Sitting at the top of the issues list across every financial sector was delay in claim handling, with 9,274 complaints, ahead of misleading information and claim denials.
General insurance is carrying a heavy share of that. AFCA’s most recent annual review shows general insurance complaints rose 17% to 34,231 in 2024-25, with comprehensive motor still the single most complained-about product and claim delays a persistent driver, made worse by parts shortages and a thin pool of skilled repairers. The pace hasn’t eased into 2026 either. AFCA logged more than 30,000 complaints in the first quarter alone, putting the year on track for around 120,000, with complaints tied to extreme weather events running close to six times the previous year.
Here’s the part that matters for you. Broker complaints sit at around 0.8% of the total, 788 in 2024-25, a fraction of the system. When a claim stalls, the client doesn’t ring the insurer’s CEO. They ring you. We’ve unpacked that gap between blame and cause in more detail in our piece on AFCA’s record complaint numbers and why brokers account for less than 1%.
How a slow claim lands on your desk
You become the unpaid chaser. Ringing assessors, repairers and claims handlers for updates, working three different portals, re-supplying information because the insurer’s teams don’t share notes. Multiply that across a handful of open claims and it eats hours of a senior broker’s day, none of it easily billable.
You absorb the emotion too. The client can’t see the insurer’s internal constraints, so when repairs stall or a business interruption payment drags, “why is this taking so long?” comes at you. After a catastrophe, you’re managing distressed clients under real financial and personal pressure, and the weight of those conversations is its own kind of work.
Then there’s the complaints risk you carry even when the cause isn’t yours. If a delay tips into a formal complaint, your file notes, your expectation-setting and your escalation steps get scrutinised. AFCA’s own approach to claims-handling complaints leans heavily on clear timelines, documented communication and well-kept claim notes. Even when a matter is ultimately found against the insurer, you’ve spent serious time building the timeline to prove it.
The longer-term cost is capacity and goodwill. High-touch claims pull time away from account management and new business, your team burns out chasing SLAs they can’t enforce, and one badly handled claim can undo years of trust and quietly choke your referral flow.
Why principals feel it hardest
The worst claims find your desk. The large accounts and the politically sensitive ones get escalated to the principal, which is exactly when you’re pulled off strategy and into evenings spent writing emails to insurers. Claims also spike when you’re already stretched, because catastrophe season and renewal peaks tend to arrive together. Without extra hands, you either slow down on new business or risk a service failure on an existing client.
There’s a particular frustration in knowing you’ve done everything right and still being unable to make the insurer move faster. Over enough of those, the thought sets in that there has to be a better way to run this.
You can’t fix any insurer’s claims department. You can change how your brokerage allocates the work, manages the communication and escalates when it needs to.
Where the pressure actually comes off
The most direct relief is taking the routine chasing off your own plate. Better Broker members are able to take advantage of a claims and admin support service, and in the network’s own words, members get four hours a month free with the option to buy more as they need it. Working under your direction, the team can lodge claims and capture the right information up front, follow up insurers on outstanding decisions, and pick up renewals or payment chasers when your own people are at capacity. That converts a big slice of unpaid chasing into work handled by a specialist team, so your time goes to advice and the complex advocacy only you can do.
It also flexes when you need it. Through a catastrophe season or a heavy claims run, you scale the support up rather than hiring short-term staff you won’t need year-round. The same article describes a holiday support program where the network monitors your inbox and handles urgent claims and endorsements for a week while you’re away, so the client never feels dropped and you actually switch off. For a small AR where the principal is the escalation point for everything, that’s the difference between a real break and a working one.
Underneath both sits the documentation backbone. Operating on a network’s compliance and practice management framework builds the habits AFCA looks for when a delay complaint escalates: every claim with a basic timeline, key communications captured, and a structured, evidence-backed path to internal dispute resolution or AFCA if it comes to that. It makes the process far less daunting if a matter does escalate, and it stops a delay being pinned on your record-keeping rather than the insurer’s conduct.
Delays aren’t going away, and the AFCA numbers make clear this is a system-wide problem rather than one bad insurer. What changes with the right support is your position in it. More hands on the admin, a stronger process behind you, and the room to communicate proactively instead of reactively. You may still be the face your client calls at claim time. You don’t have to do all the lifting alone. Bring one live problem claim to the Better Broker team and see how much of the load comes off.