Breaking the hesitation barrier on premium funding

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Attvest’s new auto-approval feature aims to eliminate uncertainty in broker-client premium funding conversations while reducing administrative burden

FOR INSURANCE brokers, the risk of a rejected premium funding application often outweighs the potential benefit of offering clients a cash flow solution they might desperately need. This moment of pause stirs doubts in the broker’s mind. Will there be a problem with the application? Will the process require multiple back-and-forth exchanges for additional information? Will the client lose trust? Is funding even an appropriate solution? Paul Fitton, chief operating officer at Attvest, understands these concerns well. “The insight we’ve gained from hundreds of brokers is that

Attvest Finance is the fourth-largest insurance funder in Australia, providing over $1.4 billion in funding in the last fiscal year. With a network of 700 brokers and authorised representatives, Attvest has helped clients improve working capital and cash flow since it launched as a startup in 2014. Its focus is on premium funding, and it recently launched ATTassist debt collection, ATTpay payments and BiiGGA merchant cash advance services in 2022.

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Attvest’s AUTO-APPROVAL

Proportion of premium funding likely to be eligible for auto-approval

“[Our auto-approval process] enables brokers to confidently provide an approved premium funding option to their clients within minutes, providing more certainty, greater efficiency and less touches to the overall process”

Paul Fitton, Attvest

there’s often a hesitation to provide a funding option to their clients,” says Fitton. “Brokers don’t want to assume a client needs funding, but in particular, they are concerned about the back-and-forth exchanges for more information, or the potential for the application to be declined.” This uncertainty creates friction in what should be a straightforward process, sometimes leading brokers to avoid offering premium funding altogether rather than risk complications. “It makes brokers think, ‘I’m just not going risk my relationship with that client’,” Fitton explains. The result is opportunities lost – for the client through missing out on an important cash flow solution and for the broker through not increasing their business and, perhaps more importantly, missing the chance to become an even more essential and trusted confidant.

Attvest’s solution to this problem comes in the form of its new auto-approval feature, currently in pilot phase with over 20 brokers and scheduled for wider release this month. “Auto-approval is Attvest’s new loan approval process. It uses automation and technology to provide ultra-fast approval confirmation,” says Fitton. “This enables brokers to confidently provide an approved premium funding option to their clients within minutes, providing more certainty, greater efficiency and less touches to the overall process.” The system can deliver approval within as little as one minute, though typically around five minutes, depending on broker preferences and firewall configurations. This time frame allows brokers to prepare their insurance policy quotes and

incorporate the fully approved premium funding option in the same client communication. “By the time you’ve crafted your email and received your fully approved letter, you can drag and drop it into the same email. Send it off, and that’s done and dusted,” Fitton says. The fundamental shift is in the messaging brokers can now offer clients up front – moving from ‘you might qualify for this funding’, with all the questions that raises, to ‘you have qualified for this funding – do you want to proceed?’

Beyond approval certainty, the feature addresses another pain point: the administrative burden created by information requests. “We can get a lot of pushback when we have to ask for information. Brokers are trying to provide a service and don’t want multiple exchanges with their clients for additional information,” says Fitton. “That certainty is a key driver.” The system aims to eliminate these extra steps by leveraging existing databases to make automated decisions. When the feature launches fully, Attvest expects that approximately 95% of quotes that come through will be eligible for the auto-approval process, with an approval rate in the high-90% range. For brokers who might be concerned about technology adoption, Fitton emphasises the simplicity of the change to their workflow. “It actually doesn’t change what the broker does at all,” he explains. “For a broker, they quote as normal, and within one to five minutes they receive a fully approved confirmation or an email saying we couldn’t fully approve it at this stage. It may say further information or review is required and ask the broker to submit the quote as normal so our expert team can review it.”

Despite the simplicity of the system, Attvest has created multiple support mechanisms to ensure brokers can comfortably adopt the new feature. “The training process and education piece will be driven by our relationship managers, making sure they’re out on the ground with their brokers, taking them through the product, making sure they understand it,” says Fitton. This in-person support is complemented by Attvest’s online education platform, ATTChannel. “It’s a really good platform,” Fitton says. “We use it for our internal training but also for external training and communications, particularly when there’s a change to how we operate.” It has short videos that brokers can access by logging into Attvest’s online portal.

in mergers and acquisitions and financial due diligence, followed by experience as a chief financial officer guiding a company through an IPO process, has equipped him with both rigorous process discipline and commercial pragmatism. “On one hand, you’ve got a really good grounding in governance. But then, working with different advisers, taking a company through an IPO process and actually stepping into the corporate world on the other side of the table – that’s where you get to learn the commerciality of how to get things done,” Fitton says. This balance between procedural excellence and commercial reality has shaped his approach at Attvest. “You can go to one extreme and gold-plate everything. Or there’s the commercial reality of we’re trying to run a business. You’ve got to have the right balance,” he explains.

Businesswomen check electronic documents on a virtual screen within a Document Management System

Instant certainty changes the equation

New perspective from outside the industry

Published 28 Apr 2025

“I was a buyer of premium funding, so I was on the other side of the table using insurance premium funding. I knew it was an incredibly important part of my work program for the year”

Paul Fitton, Attvest

>95%

Source: Attvest

Title: Chief operating officer Time in current position: 5 months Based in: Brisbane Industry experience: Corporate finance, professional services, IPOs, M&A, accounting Accreditations: Member, Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand; graduate, Australian Institute of Company Directors

Source: Attvest

Reducing administrative friction

These educational resources aim for smooth adoption, though Fitton emphasises that the real-world experience is remarkably straightforward.

Broker education and support

The premium funding market has become increasingly competitive in recent years, with new entrants and aggressive positioning from established players. “Over the last few years, we’ve seen more players enter the market,” says Fitton. “You see certain providers coming back in, getting quite aggressive. It’s one of those markets that’s clearly become quite attractive.” This competition potentially creates a race-to-the-bottom on fees, forcing premium funding providers to consider their unique value propositions. “What’s our unique service proposition? What are we going to compete on, and what are we going to give our brokers that differentiates us? We like to compete where our strengths lie. It’s around ease of transaction, service and our product differentiation,” Fitton explains. The auto-approval feature represents Attvest’s latest strategic response to these market conditions – focusing on service quality and technological efficiency rather than simply competing on price.

Meeting market challenges

As a relative newcomer to the premium funding sector, having joined Attvest just five months ago, Fitton brings an outsider’s perspective that has proved valuable in developing solutions like the auto-approval feature. “You don’t come in saying, ‘Oh, at my previous premium funder this is how we did it’ and just copy and paste … only to end up with a similar version to where you came from,” says Fitton. His background as a chartered accountant with 20 years of experience across Brisbane, Melbourne and London, primarily

Fitton believes his outsider status enhances his effectiveness, allowing him to question established practices and identify improvement opportunities. “I actually think that’s a huge advantage, because you see everything from a fresh perspective with no historical lens,” says Fitton. “You can easily sit with the team and ask, ‘Why don’t we do it this way?’ or ‘Why do we do it that way?’ This forces us to re-evaluate why we do things, reconfirming our approach or encouraging change. We might have tried things in the past that didn’t work, but things evolve and, now that we think about it again, the same approach would probably work.” This questioning approach has been central to Fitton’s leadership style and the development of initiatives like the auto-approval feature. “It just helps to get everyone to think about where we’re at and what we’re doing, and rethink things again,” he says. Before joining Attvest, Fitton had experience with premium funding from the client side. “I was a buyer of premium funding, so I was on the other side of the table using insurance premium funding. I knew it was an incredibly important part of my work program for the year,” he says. “As we went through the insurance renewal, having the funding option locked away meant you could focus on building your insurance program around the risks of what you actually needed and not the cash flow impacts.” This dual perspective – understanding both the provider and client viewpoints – informs his approach to client relationships and helps streamline the funding approval process. More perspectives and better insight allow Attvest to change the conversation dynamic – removing uncertainty, streamlining processes and transforming administrative headaches into value-added services.

The value of fresh eyes

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