Heavy motor insurance made for industry’s hardest stretch
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With a driver shortage and small operators under financial pressure, NTI’s refreshed Transport Pack shows what nearly 50 years of industry data looks like when it’s put to work
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SOMEWHERE IN Australia right now, a transport business is advertising for a truck driver it cannot find.
Road freight moves 75% of all goods across the country, and the sector is currently running around 28,000 drivers short. For brokers with clients in heavy motor and transport, that shortage shows up in conversations about coverage, compliance and whether a client can actually grow their fleet when qualified drivers are so hard to come by.
Growing financial pressure is another hard reality for the sector. Insolvencies in transport, postal and warehousing sat at 196 in the year to June 2022, but by the year to June 2025 that figure had reached 734. The current financial year is
The vehicles, vessels and equipment NTI’s customers rely on have become safer, faster and cleaner. The cargoes they carry are now more delicate and time-sensitive than ever before. With over 50 years’ experience in the insurance industry, NTI has always been successful in finding new ways to keep its customers moving, across the heavy vehicle, mobile plant and equipment, and marine industries. Its combination of tailored products, experienced people, accredited repair and recovery networks and industry advocacy has seen NTI ranked as Australia’s #1 specialist insurer. Yet insurance is just a piece of paper, a promise. It’s not until you really need an insurer that you understand its point of difference – the NTI Difference.
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Insolvencies rising in transport, postal and warehousing
2021/22
“The insolvency rate is 400% on what it was three years ago for these [small] businesses. We just know that they’re having really serious pressure to even stay afloat”
Alisha Hill,
NTI
currently on track to set a new record, even before the full effects of skyrocketing fuel prices are reflected in the data.
CreditorWatch’s Business Risk Index data for March also shows that road freight is now one of the more stressed sectors in the Australian economy, with 7.1% of businesses in the sector closed in the past year, up from 6.2% a year earlier.
While insurance can’t solve every problem in the sector, there is one insurance provider prepared to meet these harsh realities head-on with flexible product design, comprehensive industry networks and industry data that is broad and deep enough to grasp the complexities of issues that transport operators face.
NTI has spent close to 50 years paying that kind of attention, and its latest enhancements to both its Transport Pack and Yellow Cover products for mobile plant and equipment reflect a provider that understands the difference between what an industry needs on paper and what it needs on the ground.
Recent changes to NTI’s Transport Pack are aimed at remedying three pressure points that brokers and the company’s data have flagged: driver experience restrictions that no longer fit the labour market, excess structures that punish small operators at the worst possible time, and theft scenarios that the old wording simply did not keep pace with.
Removing the barriers for new drivers
The most significant structural change to the Transport Pack is the removal of driver experience restrictions across most occupations. Previously, inexperienced drivers faced limits on how many trailers they could pull and how far they could travel, regardless of what they were carrying. Under the refreshed wording, those restrictions now apply only to the three highest-risk occupations: dangerous goods (DG), refrigerated goods and livestock.
“There is a serious driver shortage in the transport industry in Australia,” says Alisha Hill, head of platforms at NTI. “The biggest change that we’ve made is that you now only need
experience if you’re pulling DG, refrigerated goods or livestock. For all other occupations, you no longer need to have driving experience.”*
The aim is to ease staffing pressure: if the industry needs 28,000 more drivers and the entry pathway is complicated by coverage restrictions that no longer reflect actual risk, something has to give. NTI has chosen to loosen the restriction while retaining appropriate excess provisions for higher-risk situations. For brokers whose clients are actively trying to bring new drivers on board, the change should mean that discussions around coverage can be a bit smoother.
Easing the pressure on small operators The driver shortage is one dimension of the current market. Financial pressure is another. With transport sector insolvencies jumping fourfold since 2022, many firms are holding on by their fingernails. Rigid truck owners, typically small businesses running one or two vehicles, are among those feeling it most acutely.
NTI’s response is the removal of an imposed excess that previously applied when a rigid truck travelled outside its declared radius. A $3,000 penalty excess for straying beyond a geographic boundary is something NTI is willing to flex on in the current economic climate.
“Rigid truck owners generally only have a couple of rigid trucks. They’re the ones that are under a lot of stress at the moment,” Hill says. “The insolvency rate is 400% on what it was three years ago for these businesses. We just know that they’re having really serious pressure to even stay afloat.”
The change is deliberate and targeted. Operators still declare how they use their vehicles, and standard excess conditions still apply. But the additional excess for travelling outside a declared radius is gone.
“We’ve said, you use your rigid truck how you want to use it; you tell us how you’re using it,” Hill explains. “But if you do happen to go outside the radius that you tell us, we’re not going to impact your excess. You can have the standard excess if you have an accident, rather than imposing another $3,000 on you.”*
Theft by hirer, now automatic The third change to the Transport Pack mirrors an enhancement being made simultaneously to NTI’s Yellow Cover product for mobile plant and equipment: automatic cover for theft by a hirer where a signed agreement is in place.
This has been a gap in the market. Where an operator hires out equipment to a customer under a formal agreement placing liability with the hirer, and that hirer then steals the asset, many providers have treated the scenario as outside standard theft cover. NTI now treats it as what it is.
“We are seeing an increase in theft on hired-out plant and equipment,” Hill says. “This one comes directly from our customers, who are saying, look, it’s still a theft. So we’ve recognised that it’s still theft.”
The cover requires that a signed hire agreement is in place, hirer details are properly recorded and handovers are controlled. Where those conditions are met, the protection is automatic.*
The platform that brokers actually use Product changes are only useful if brokers can access them without friction, and NTI has invested substantially in overhauling Sunrise Exchange, one of the platforms through which its products are distributed.
The referral rate reflects steady progress in the diminishing time brokers need to wait for a response and a corresponding improvement in customer satisfaction. Five years ago, NTI measured that around 40% of Transport Pack submissions required manual referral. A significant platform improvement in early 2024 brought that down substantially, with a more ambitious reduction intended in the next 18 months.
“We’ve completely refreshed it compared to when we first launched it in 2008,” says Hill. “We’ve got dynamic question sets now so, if you answer one thing, it leads to one more question [rather than a list].”
Dynamic question sets mean the platform responds to each answer in real time, asking only what is relevant. “What that does is reduce referrals,” says Hill.
The goal is straight-through processing as the default, with manual referrals reserved for genuinely complex or high-risk submissions.
“Our vision for our platform business is that brokers will just be able to have an answer straight back to them,” Hill adds. “They won’t have to wait an hour to get a response back from NTI on a referral that goes through.”
For brokers managing large volumes of SME clients in transport and mobile plant, the efficiency gain is material. Less time waiting for referrals is more time spent with clients.
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Published 21 Apr 2026
“NTI will always be there. We know what’s going on, and we’ll continue to make changes that support industry and help our brokers better serve our shared customers”
Alisha Hill,
NTI
196
2022/23
347
2023/24
495
2024/25
734
2025/26 (to date)
532
Source: ASIC
Source: NTARC Major Incident Investigation Report 2025
2019
14.3%
Inattention/distraction a major cause of heavy vehicle incidents
2020
15.4%
2021
20.2%
2022
13.4%
2023
19.5%
2024
17.9%
What nearly 50 years of data means Underneath the product and platform changes sits something that takes decades to build and cannot be quickly replicated: a data infrastructure that NTI has been developing since its mainframe system went live in 2008, capturing granular vehicle-level information on every policy it has written.
Hill has worked across the insurance industry and understands what sets NTI apart. “Having worked at other insurers, I can confidently say that strong data is a real point of difference for us,” she says. “It’s not about collecting more for the sake of it – it’s about gathering the right data and using it in meaningful ways.”
The data is not collected passively. NTI converts it into outputs that go directly back to the industry. One example is the annual National Truck Accident Research Centre (NTARC) Major Incident Investigation Report, which draws on NTI claims data to help operators understand the sources of their losses.
The NTARC reports analyse claims data to identify crash causes. For example, the 2025 report found that inattention/distraction represented 17.9% of all crashes involving at least one NTI-insured heavy vehicle in 2024, and that human-factor incidents alone accounted for a greater rate than all other cause categories combined. For over two decades, NTI has used this report to provide a snapshot of the heavy vehicle sector for industry and policymakers.
When NTI identified elevated loss patterns in the dairy transport segment, it didn’t simply adjust its underwriting. It worked with the dairy industry and major transport operators to develop the Spilt Milk program, a safety management initiative that is publicly accessible to any operator who needs it.
The ability to spot a problem in the data, identify which clients and industry segments are affected and move quickly to address it is where nearly 50 years of deep sector focus becomes a practical advantage for brokers. A broker placing a dairy transport client, a refrigerated goods operator or a construction machinery hire business is not just accessing a policy. They are accessing a provider that’s been watching those sectors closely enough to see what’s coming before it arrives.
NTI works closely with the Australian Trucking Association, NatRoad and Heavy Vehicle Industry Australia and participates at board and government advocacy levels. Its risk engineers work directly with transport clients in the field.
“By partnering with us, brokers are actually providing additional value to their clients,” Hill says.
What brokers can expect ahead Hill doesn’t anticipate a quick easing of conditions in the transport sector. The pressure on operators is likely to persist, and possibly intensify, before it lifts. NTI’s response is to keep reducing friction wherever it can, through policy wording, platform efficiency and direct broker support.
“We’re just going to do everything we can to support it with changes like we’ve just made to our policy wordings,” she says. “And by supporting brokers as much as we possibly can by giving them the time to be able to spend with their customers.”
The industry associations are working on their own advocacy initiatives, and NTI is engaged in those conversations. But for brokers placing heavy motor and transport risks right now, the more immediate point is that a provider with the depth of data, the sector relationships and the claims infrastructure to back up its wording is a different proposition from one that isn’t embedded in the industry at that level.
“NTI will always be there,” Hill says. “We know what’s going on, and we’ll continue to make changes that support industry and help our brokers better serve our shared customers.”
*Subject to policy terms, conditions, limits and exclusions. Features, benefits and outcomes may vary depending on individual circumstances and risk profile.
©2026 NTI Limited ABN 84 000 746 109 AFSL 237246. This article contains general information only and you should obtain your own professional advice based on your personal and business circumstances. Furthermore, this article is not intended to constitute financial product advice, legal advice, risk management advice or any other professional advice. When making decisions about our insurance, consider the PDS and TMD at https://www.nti.com.au/. NTI bears no responsibility, and shall not be held liable, for any loss, damage or injury arising directly or indirectly from your use of or reliance on the information in this article.
Percentage of incidents attributed to inattention/distraction
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