How QBE is rethinking risk management for businesses
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As the risk environment becomes more complex, QBE Insurance’s Risk Solutions team helps businesses better manage and reduce risk, while building resilience beyond insurance alone
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THERE IS a familiar, methodical approach to risk management that business owners and their brokers know all too well: the annual site visit, the clipboard, the checklist, the report filed and forgotten. While that formula had a place, the current risk environment demands something different.
The approach of QBE Insurance’s Risk Solutions team goes far beyond the clipboard. It sets the focus on bespoke solutions that remove assumptions and reflect the real needs of the business from the inside out, based on real-world data.
“We operate as a value-add for customers; a proactive risk management team,” says Matt Fermanis, head of risk solutions at QBE Insurance Australia Pacific. “We partner with customers to help them elevate their risk maturity, to enable greater business resilience that supports growth while also empowering their businesses to explore and innovate so that they can move forward with more confidence in an environment shaped by constant change and heightened uncertainty.”
QBE Australia is part of the QBE Insurance Group, an international insurer and reinsurer headquartered in Sydney with offices across all states and territories. At QBE we’re driven by our purpose: enabling a more resilient future – and our vision to be the most consistent and innovative risk partner. We provide a broad range of insurance products and risk management solutions to personal, business, corporate and institutional customers – from car and home insurance to tailored business packages and specialist cover for industries such as aviation and farming.
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Core risk management services at QBE
Training and education
“We partner with customers to help them elevate their risk maturity, to enable greater business resilience that supports growth while also empowering their businesses to explore and innovate”
Matt Fermanis,
QBE Insurance
That framing – resilience as a precondition for growth rather than a constraint on it – runs through everything the team does. And with a national team of more than 20 employees consisting of risk managers, risk engineers, data analysts and an L&D manager and program manager, QBE Risk Solutions’ offering is no small side project.
Beyond insurance Risk Solutions sits within QBE’s Australia Pacific commercial business and is also part of a broader global capability, working collaboratively with Risk Solutions teams in QBE’s International and North America divisions. Its remit spans the commercial customer base, from small to medium-sized enterprises right through to large corporates, and its team brings decades of experience across a diverse range of industries.
“We support our commercial customers to help them better understand, manage and prevent risks in their business,” says Fermanis. “We’re a strong believer that losses, or some losses, can be prevented through effective and proactive risk management strategies.”
For brokers, this means access to a team that can do something some businesses lack the in-house capability to do themselves: take a hard look at where the risks are, identify what’s driving them and then bring credible solutions to bear. It’s a value-add proposition that sits alongside the insurance product.
The data advantage QBE has taken a data-led approach to risk management by embedding dedicated data and analytics resources directly within its Risk Solutions team.
Typically, data functions sit separately from risk management operations, producing reports that inform rather than direct the work. QBE made a deliberate decision to bring that capability inside the team itself.
“We want to be data-driven, and we want to be evidence-based in everything that we do,” says Fermanis. “Data and analytics enable us to provide our business customers with actionable insights and more meaningful information to drive informed risk decision-making and optimise risk management strategies.”
The team uses data to identify which customers would benefit most from certain risk interventions and then matches those customers with specific solutions that are most likely to make a difference.
“The whole data and analytics piece is crucial to our risk management approach – helping us identify root causes and match them to the right solutions,” says Fermanis.
QBE’s Customer Solutions Panel QBE’s Customer Solutions Panel was created to address a practical gap: what happens when a customer needs a solution that sits beyond QBE’s in-house capability. Since it was established last year, the panel has grown to include over 30 specialist providers, covering areas such as business continuity planning, ESG advisory, and automation technology for screening in the care and community sectors.
“Rather than just providing a customer with a risk recommendation, we wanted to help connect them with the right solutions for their specific risk needs, so we’ve actually partnered with providers that can deliver those solutions,” says Fermanis. The panel offers a diverse range of risk management services and solutions – from workplace safety and business resilience to telematics, ergonomic technology and fire protection, areas where deep specialism is required.
The panel follows a straightforward three-step process: identifying the customer’s risk challenges, devising tailored solutions and deploying those solutions through panel providers. For brokers, the practical benefit is significant. Rather than identifying a risk gap and leaving the customer to find their own path to a solution, the panel enables QBE to deliver a more comprehensive, end-to-end risk management service by connecting customers with trusted providers who can deliver the solutions they need.
Three points of difference Fermanis sees three main points of difference in QBE Risk Solutions’ offering that set its broker experience apart. The first is a genuinely customer-first orientation. “We genuinely exist as a team to build resilience with our customers in their business,” he says. “While many similar teams tend to focus on managing claims costs for their own businesses, our approach is firmly customer-first. By better supporting customers, we often see positive outcomes on both sides.”
The second is the commitment to driving innovative risk solutions through the Customer Solutions Panel and the investments QBE has made to support specific customer risk interventions.
The third is what Fermanis describes as a personalised approach, one that has deliberately moved away from the traditional model. “It’s not clipboard and checklist,” he says. “It’s really partnering with our customers, understanding what their business is, what their strategic objectives are, where they see the biggest concerns and areas that they need support in, and then tailoring solutions and working with them collaboratively to implement what they need.”
Underpinning much of this work is QBE’s risk management platform, RiskAdvance, which modernises and simplifies processes across the insurance value chain. The platform supports both in-person and virtual risk assessments, provides data-driven risk insights and gives brokers and customers a single view of risk improvements and progress on them. For brokers in particular, the platform provides faster turnaround times and streamlined monitoring and management of risk improvement activity, without the administrative friction that has historically made follow-through difficult.
Serving SMEs and corporates alike The team directs more of its intensive, advisory resources towards mid-market and corporate customers due to the scale and complexity of their risks, through what QBE calls its Client Risk Management Practice, where risk management specialists work closely with customers to develop tailored strategies. But smaller businesses are not overlooked.
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Published 18 May 2026
“SME customers are generally the customers that need lots of support and might sometimes be at the start of their risk journey and not necessarily have the in-house capability and resources they need”
Matt Fermanis,
QBE Insurance
Risk analysis and reporting
Risk improvement identification and implementation support
Risk management seminars and workshops
Risk insights and knowledge sharing
Technical advice, reviews and support
Solutions offering
Automated risk insights and reporting allow real-time and automated reports that provide insights into claims, industry trends, best practices and current and historical risk performance
QBe’s real-world data advantage
Risk benchmarking assesses the risk levels associated with each customer by comparing statistically against other customers of the same industry, size or risk maturity
Tailored and bespoke solutions designed to meet the unique needs of partners and customers provide actionable insights to enhance risk management
“SME customers are generally the customers that need lots of support and might sometimes be at the start of their risk journey and not necessarily have the in-house capability and resources they need,” Fermanis says. For these customers, QBE is building self-service digital assessments, tools, guidance documents and e-learning through platforms including RiskAdvance, Q Academy and Q Risk Insights, making risk education more accessible without requiring the same intensity of engagement.
Looking ahead, Fermanis sees the next 12 months as an opportunity to move risk solutions closer to the heart of QBE’s product and underwriting offerings. “How do we start embedding some of those risk innovations into product and underwriting offerings?” he says. “That’s where we want to get
to over the next 12 months, really making sure they’re part of the product offering, rather than requiring separate engagement from Risk Solutions on individual accounts.”
The risk environment is more volatile than it has historically been, driven by AI and cyber threats, supply chain disruption, geopolitical uncertainty and evolving regulatory and compliance requirements. Fermanis says the team’s broader focus is on equipping customers to withstand whatever comes next, acknowledging that this is harder to predict than it used to be. In the current environment, business resilience planning, business continuity, crisis management and resilience testing are all growing areas of engagement.
“What I’m most proud of is our ability to keep up with the pace of change and continue to invest so that we’re in the best position to support our partners and customers,” he says. “The risk landscape is evolving rapidly, and we’ve strengthened our team with new capabilities to meet that change, while continuing to expand our risk offerings in a way that’s innovative, scalable and sustainable.”
Disclaimer: Products issued by QBE Insurance (Australia) Ltd. ABN 78 003 191 035, AFSL 239545 (QBE). Normal underwriting terms and conditions apply. Any advice provided is general only and has been prepared without taking into account your objectives, financial situation or needs and may not be right for you. Please read the Policy Wording or Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) and Target Market Determination (TMD) to decide if a product is right for you.
QBE makes no warranty or guarantee about the validity, currency, accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the content in this article that does not relate to QBE’s insurance products. Readers relying on this content do so at their own risk. It is the responsibility of the reader to evaluate the quality and accuracy of this content. Reference in this article (if any) to any specific product, process, or service, and links from this content to third-party websites (if any), do not constitute or imply an endorsement or recommendation by QBE and shall not be used for advertising or service/product endorsement purposes.
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