Ask a principal broker when they last took a proper break, and most go quiet. Not a working trip with the laptop open on the plane, not a long weekend cut short by an urgent endorsement. A real one. The reason usually isn’t discipline. When the whole business runs through one person, every renewal date, open claim and insurer relationship sits with that person, so stepping away stops being a lifestyle choice and becomes a live business risk.
The numbers match what the job already feels like. Insurance News’ 2025 Wellbeing Survey of almost 1,000 industry professionals found 77% of brokers experienced burnout in the past year, more than 60% regularly worked over two hours of unpaid overtime a week, and only 4% never struggled to switch off after hours. The 2023 edition told the same story, with more than two-thirds of respondents unable to wind down after work and 40% reporting mental health issues. One bad year would be understandable, but two surveys apart showing the same result points to something built into how brokerages are structured.
The problem is structural, not personal
Plenty of small-business owners struggle to disconnect. Brokers get a sharper version of it because the work is relationship and knowledge intensive. Client risk history, claims in progress, the quirks of a particular insurer contact: it all tends to live in the principal’s head and often nowhere else. Research from OnDeck found a third of Australian small-business owners take less than two weeks’ leave a year, one in seven can’t recall their last real holiday, and 77% of those who do take leave spend it thinking about the business. Allianz points to heavy workloads, constant deadlines and the emotional toll of distressed clients and claims disputes as the main burnout drivers, which are the exact tasks that don’t pause because the broker is at the airport.
This usually gets worse as a broker succeeds, not better. More clients means more renewals, more claims and more relationships, all still routed through the same person. Without a deliberate way to spread that load, growth and freedom pull against each other.
Willpower isn’t the missing piece
Generic advice on this stays at the level of individual tactics. Warn clients ahead of time, schedule emails, set an out-of-office, ask a trusted contact to cover emergencies. Allianz’s own burnout guidance runs along similar lines: speak up early, set boundaries, protect recovery time. CommBank’s version for business owners does too. These help at the edges. None of them answer the real question for a broker, which is who actually knows the book well enough to run it while you’re gone.
Two gaps usually keep a broker tied to the desk:
- No qualified backup for claims, so lodgements and follow-ups stall the moment the principal is unreachable.
- No shared record of client history, portfolio detail and insurer relationships, so any absence turns into a service gap instead of a clean handover.
This is key person risk happening in real time rather than as some future hypothetical. Advisers already treat it as something to manage actively; key person insurance exists precisely because losing the one person who holds the knowledge and relationships can cripple a business financially. A planned two-week break tests the same weakness, and a business that can’t survive a scheduled absence is badly exposed to an unplanned one.
Redundancy, and a different way of running the business
Brokers who genuinely switch off haven’t found extra willpower. They’ve built redundancy into the business, usually with outside support they couldn’t assemble on their own. Better Broker Network was set up by directors who ran their own brokerage for more than 16 years and hit this exact ceiling.
On the practical side, administration and claims support covers the work that doesn’t stop for a holiday. When a broker hands over a claim, the team runs it from lodgement to settlement, handles insurer communication, and liaises with the client as directed, so claims keep moving while the principal is offline. It isn’t only for sole operators. Even a well-staffed team needs that capacity through the June, July and September renewal crunch, when the workload spikes hardest.
The bigger shift is in how the business is put together in the first place. Business mentoring sessions treat work-life balance and sustainable growth as standing agenda items alongside pricing, portfolio mix and capacity, so time off gets planned for like any other business decision. For a lot of principals the harder work is the move from operating as the best broker in the room to running the business as an owner, and that’s the conversation mentoring is built around.
A brokerage that can run without its founder for two weeks is the same brokerage that holds its value when the founder eventually steps back for good. Succession and equity support works from that end of things, helping structure a business a partner, a buyer or another network member could take on, whether that’s a full sale, a partial equity release, or a handover managed over several years.
The boutique structure means a broker deals with experienced principals and underwriting specialists directly rather than a ticket queue. Placement support and a handful of peers who can be briefed matter for a real break: there’s someone to step in on an urgent matter, so being away stops meaning being on call.
A business that runs without you
None of this turns the principal into a passive owner. It’s deliberate capacity: delegated claims work, shared placement expertise, mentoring that keeps the business pointed at sustainable growth, and peers who know the book well enough to hold it for a fortnight. Brokers who’ve made the change tend to say the same thing. What let them step away wasn’t a personality trait, it was having a business built to keep running without them.
For a broker who can’t remember their last real holiday, the fix isn’t more effort at switching off. A business, and a network, built so a proper break is a normal part of running the place will do what willpower can’t. See how the offer is put together.