Seasonal surges mean higher demand, hotter days, and bigger stockpiles. That brings risk for small and medium businesses across Australia.

As summer arrives, the rush is on to keep cool rooms running, line up reliable hands, and avoid supply chain hiccups.

The Australian Energy Market Operator’s latest report gives a clear warning: the grid should hold, but only if every planned upgrade gets done on time. Any delay increases the risk of blackouts just as trading peaks.

Three out of four SMEs say peak season keeps them up at night. The biggest worries? Stock loss, cash flow pains, and staff issues. A little forward planning makes all the difference, putting you a step ahead while others scramble.

Stock spoilage: profits on ice
Everything that needs the cold, from sliced cakes to medicines, faces spoilage if your equipment breaks or the power goes. It is more than just lost product.

You take a hit on margin, with customers left disappointed and trade missed. Insurers are seeing more claims, with businesses taking on more perishables and high-value goods to meet seasonal demand.

Retail operators expect even greater exposure to spoilage and interruption this year.

A single outage can mean thousands in spoilage. Good insurance is vital, but it needs to be matched by working temperature controls, up-to-date maintenance logs, and regular checks.

Extra hands, extra risks
When business booms, you might boost your team with agency, casual, or labour-hire staff. Temporary workers are more likely to miss procedures or make mistakes, especially when busy.

Speak to your insurance broker or advisor to ensure that you have adequate insurance cover for claims made by labour-hire and agency staff used in your business. Check both your liability policy and your induction processes.

Cash flow and continuity
Weather, power failures, delivery delays, or people off sick can each put business on ice. Missing one day of peak trade can hit cash flow, supplier payments, and customer trust for weeks.

Recent research finds many companies still treat resilience and continuity separately. This can open holes in your planning and coverage.

Your broker or advisor can help guide you on business interruption insurance that matches real risks: lost trade, not just damaged property. Down time should not be a disaster.

Four steps to stay ahead
Review storage and backup: Check every fridge, cool room and your backup power. Confirm your policy covers spoilage and product loss

Know your staff mix: Identify all temporary, agency or casual workers, then make sure your liability cover applies to every name

Test your continuity plan: Play through real scenarios, from outages to key people going missing, and fix any gaps

Update policy settings: Make sure your covers are set for peak season, not just the quiet months

Australian SMEs now face tougher conditions than ever. Three in four suffer late payments; borrowing costs are at a five-year high, while insolvency rates jumped 28 percent in the past year. Four out of five small firms are still doing accounts manually, not digitally. Automating records reduces headaches and helps you spot risks faster. Digital risk is now a front-line issue. Sixty-seven percent of cyber incidents impact small business, and busy times can make these threats even harder to manage.

Speak with Aust Brokers Terrace – their specialists are able to disccus and advise on your insurance needs for your business.

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Australia is heading into a high-risk summer, with hotter days, warmer nights, and more rain than usual expected across much of the country. Over the past year, we’ve already seen more than 80 severe weather events. Emergency agencies say flood, storm, and bushfire risks could jump by as much as one third in some regions. Warmer oceans are supercharging storm systems, and fast-drying ground across NSW, Queensland, and Victoria is setting the stage for quicker, harder-to-predict fire behaviour.

How severe this summer is looking
The Bureau of Meteorology expects both day and night temperatures to be unusually elevated. More than four in five regions face higher-than-average overnight heat. Rainfall has been inconsistent; some areas are soaked, while others are drying fast, which tends to create stop–start bursts of risk. Parts of the nation’s east should expect above average-rainfall; the west, below average.

Bigger fuel loads in Victoria, Queensland and along the east coast mean grass and scrub fires can take hold quickly. Storms have already driven about 126,000 insurance claims this year, costing close to $1.5 billion. Losses from the first half of 2025 have already topped $1.8 billion and continue to rise. Secondary perils are the everyday extreme events that hit more often; things like sudden flash floods, intense summer heatwaves, hailstorms and fast-forming storm cells. They don’t always make headlines like cyclones or bushfires, but together they now cause far more damage across Australia. These events strike with little warning, affect built-up areas, and put pressure on drainage, power, and older buildings.

In some hotspots, the risk is so frequent and severe that insurers price it higher or limit what they can cover, simply because the losses keep rising faster than the system can absorb.

Insurance costs keep climbing
Insurers are making big changes as climate risks rise. Pricing is becoming more fine-grained, and high-risk areas or industries are feeling the squeeze. Construction firms are seeing higher excesses; retail and hospitality are facing stricter conditions; and professional services firms are being asked for clearer evidence of continuity planning.

About three in five major weather events now lead to business disruption long after the physical clean-up is over. Experts also say Australia is facing a $4.5 billion insurance crisis, with one in six businesses unable to secure cover that genuinely matches their risk and cashflow.

Affordability and underinsurance pressures
The latest Insurance Council of Australia data shows more than half of Australia’s local government areas now face either high or very high exposure to extreme weather. For SMEs this often means more conditions in policies, larger excesses, and sometimes unexpected gaps.

Industry data suggests about seven in ten businesses are underinsured, with an average shortfall of roughly 30 percent across property, equipment, and other assets. Up to four in five businesses never fully recover after a major event when insurance cover proves inadequate.

What SMEs can do right now
Heat, heavy rain, and sudden storms affect every industry. Practical steps like these help reduce risk and strengthen your resilience:

Protect people first: Review heat protocols, storm-safe procedures and communication plans
Check critical equipment: HVAC, roofing, drainage, backup power and batteries
Review site exposure: Outdoor areas, signage, storage, vegetation and firebreaks
Confirm supplier continuity: Transport, logistics, backup providers and cloud systems
Check coverage accuracy: Make sure sums insured reflect current rebuild costs
Review business interruption triggers: Know what is covered and what is excluded
Document risk controls: Insurers expect clear proof of maintenance and planning
Early action really matters. Nearly half of Australia’s small and medium businesses are underinsured by at least 20 per cent, and rising building and replacement costs mean gaps widen quickly if values aren’t reviewed regularly.

Austbrokers Terrace can assist businesses in reviewing their insurance policies. Speak with one of our specialists today.

The post Tools & Tips to Handle Summer Weather Risks Effectively appeared first on Austbrokers Terrace Insurance | Adelaide | Melbourne.

For Australian SMEs, the biggest threats aren’t always the ones making headlines. Inflation and cyber attacks grab attention, but it’s the unseen risks that can do the most damage.

Major legal firms, including Allens, warn that geopolitical shocks, AI governance failures and reputational vulnerabilities are accelerating alongside traditional economic pressures.

Cyber and AI Beyond the Basics

Digital transformation has emerged as the primary business challenge for Australian companies in 2025. More than half (53%) of leaders identifying it as their top priority, says KPMG.

The Australian Signals Directorate’s 2023–24 Annual Cyber Threat Report reveals cybercrime reports increased 23 percent to over 94,000 incidents. That’s about one attack every six minutes.

Many SMEs assume their basic safeguards are enough, overlooking how AI tools and third-party vendors expand their attack surface. Weak AI governance can cause data leaks or harmful automated decisions — and those missteps can quickly trigger notifiable breaches under the Privacy Act.

Supply Chain and Integration Gaps

Supply chain vulnerabilities have intensified, with extreme weather events causing cascading disruptions. The February 2025 Queensland flooding severed the Bruce Highway for three weeks. The disaster cost businesses an estimated $45 million daily in delayed shipments. All up, lost exports across all impact sectors slashed $2 billion off the value of production.

Growth often means adding more partners, platforms and integrations.

Be wary of shadow IT, such as unverified APIs or weak contract clauses that can leave hidden weak links. A single vendor outage can disrupt operations or introduce risks you didn’t anticipate.

Reputation, ESG, and Regulatory Blindspots

Litigation related to environmental, social and governance issues is the fastest-growing category of business disputes. In 2024, there were 47 new cases with high-profile settlements showing real financial consequences.

Reputational damage now spreads faster via social channels. Over half of Australians say they would abandon a brand after one negative incident.

Meanwhile, new climate-related disclosure rules came into effect in January 2025. Large entities must publish detailed sustainability reports. There is a phased implementation for other organisations. Treasury defines ‘large entities’.

While the new rules apply to large entities, the flow-on effects are already reaching SMEs. To stay in the game, smaller businesses will need to track and report basic climate data, so they can meet customer and contract requirements tied to sustainability reporting.

Think energy use, emissions, and supply chain impacts. Those SMEs that don’t may find themselves locked out of lucrative supply chains as compliance expectations tighten. The Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) gives a rundown of the sustainability reporting requirements for SMEs. Check out the SME Climate Hub, too. Also, consider comprehensive carbon management platforms such as ClimateCover, Trace Carbon Management, or Seedling Earth.

How to Start Mapping Blindspots

You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Try these steps to surface hidden gaps:

Stress: run internal stress tests, such as vendor outages, AI errors, or compliance audits.
Audit: list all software, integrations, and tools in use (official and shadow).
Record: maintain an obligations register. This records all material (legal and contractual obligations of the business) and assigns key controls and accountability to adequately manage those obligations. New or amended regulatory obligations are simply added to the register with key controls updated accordingly.
Review: check contracts for weak liability, breach, and data clauses.
Train: update policies and make sure teams know which tools to use and how to report issues.
Scenario: run tabletop exercises that include cyber, reputational, or supply chain incidents.
These actions reveal weak links and let you strengthen them before something goes wrong.

Austbrokers Terrace have specialists for all your insurance needs.

The post Don’t Let Business Blindspots Catch Your SME Off Guard appeared first on Austbrokers Terrace Insurance | Adelaide | Melbourne.

Happy Chinese New Year

Gōng xǐ fā cái 

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St John Ambulance has a handy definition for tradies, saying they include technicians, trade workers, labourers, machinery operators, and drivers.

However tradies rate fourth highest for work-related injuries, says the Australian Bureau of Statistics. About a third of workers are tradies, says Safe Work Australia and the Australian Physiotherapy Association. Yet, tradies account for six out of 10 serious workplace-related injury claims.

Typical injuries include:
Traumatic joint injuries, often ankle sprain
Musculoskeletal disorders, including muscle tears
Repetitive strain injuries, including hand-arm vibration syndrome and to cartilage
Back pain
Bone breakages and fractures
Lacerations and wounds, e.g., nail gun injury
Dangerous dust-related diseases
Cancers
And there are other risks that can lead to fatalities. Mostly, they involve motor vehicles, falls/slips and tricks, exposure to dangerous chemicals or being struck by equipment or objects. Other causes include violence or animals, fires and explosions, too.

Correct Manual Handling
We can all do with a refresher about best practices for manual handling. Here’s how to do it right:

Maintain an upright chest posture while handling objects
Keep loads close to your body when lifting
Avoid twisting or making uncomfortable movements
Don’t hesitate to ask for assistance when necessary
Whenever feasible, use lifting equipment and aids to transport items
Find out more from this SafeWork NSW guide, which also goes into detail about hazardous manual tasks. Also check out SafeWork Australia’s website.

Wear PPE
Your workplace and tradies’ vehicles may have a good stock of personal protective equipment (PPE). But use this checklist to see what’s available on site and to assess the condition:

Goggles or safety glasses
Dust masks and respirators
Earmuffs and earplugs
Gloves
Face shields
Coveralls
Knee pads
Steel-capped shoes with good tread
Boot guards/gaiters
Reflective vests (zip them up, rather than leave them flapping, which can be dangerous around equipment)
Hard hats and long clothing, sunscreen, and sun hats as extra PPE
Invest in Mental Health
As well as first aid courses, there are specific courses that cater for mental health, says St John Ambulance. But don’t offload mental health upskilling to your staff – foster mental health in your workplace. For example, do you have a mental health first aid officer?

According to a recent OzHelp survey, about a third of tradies surveyed say they’d not received any mental health training or support at work. Almost half said they wanted to learn more about helping a friend or coworker having a rough trot. Two in 10 said they wouldn’t seek support even if they needed it.

Here are the main reasons tradies said they were stressed out:

Work pressures
Family and relationship pressures
Financial pressures
Mental health
The OzHelp survey found that tradies prefer BBQ catchups, mental health and wellbeing training, and screening that are on site.

Women tradies commonly report that foul language, bullying, harassment, and sexist jokes are rife. Solutions include all-female work teams, networking initiatives, mentoring programs, and women’s sheds. There’s also the SALT organisation, which supports and links tradeswomen.

Consider how your business can be more diverse in its hires. It’s a proven boost for profitability, innovation, better decision-making, attracting and retaining top talent, and more, says Diversity Australia.

Workers’ Comp Cover
Workers’ compensation insurance is important where your business has employees. Work health and safety (WHS) involves managing risks to the health and safety of everyone in your workplace, including your:

workers
customers
visitors
suppliers
Be sure your business abides by workplace health and safety laws and regulations. This includes having workers’ compensation cover. Australian law sets down that employers have a duty of care for the safety of workers at their workplace, and that includes tradespeople.

Aim for strong risk-management policies that identify, minimise, control, or eliminate hazards and risks. Having a robust approach, including site risk assessments, safety equipment, plus regular training, could earn you a premium discount, too. Workers compensation insurance can cover medical costs, rehabilitation, income loss due to workplace injury, and any permanent injury suffered.

Austbrokers Terrace can assist businesses – whatever the size – in this area. Speak with them today.

The post Protecting Tradies is Good for Your Business appeared first on Austbrokers Terrace Insurance | Adelaide | Melbourne.

The last few years have shown us that COVID 19 was not a one off. Since 2020, businesses have had to navigate a rolling series of shocks, including a global pandemic, war, energy price spikes, supply chain disruption, extreme weather and a steady rise in cyber attacks.

Your risk profile does not sit in isolation. It is part of a bigger system shaped by climate, geopolitics, technology and regulation. It makes sense to strengthen your approach to risk management and to check that your insurance is keeping pace.

Black Swan or Grey Rhino?
Black swans are outlier events that are tricky to anticipate, let alone plan for. In reality, many of the risks keeping business owners awake now look more like grey rhinos, the term US policy analyst Michele Wucker uses for highly probable, high impact threats that we tend to ignore until they are charging straight at us. What gets in the way are cognitive biases that keep us in denial. Find out more from Wucker’s TED talk.

Business leaders and scholars look to grey rhinos as a reframing of risk to help recover faster from disruption, build resilience, and pinpoint leading indicators. It’s about decreasing the uncertainty of risks that could confront your business.

Risks Have Not Gone Away
COVID 19 has faded from the headlines, but the underlying drivers of pandemic risk have strengthened. Studies of four centuries of disease data suggest there is around a one in three to two in five chance of experiencing a pandemic as intense as COVID 19 in a lifetime.

Climate change is another amplifier. Research shows that more than half of known human infectious diseases can be worsened by climate related hazards such as heatwaves, flooding and drought. Scientists are also warning about a new “age of the panzootic”, where diseases like highly pathogenic bird flu move rapidly between animal species and may spill over into humans.

For business owners, the message is not to panic. It is to treat future health emergencies as one of several predictable grey rhinos that could disrupt your workforce, supply chain and customer base.

More Globally Disruptive Events Likely
Apart from the pandemic, more frequent and severe global disruptions are possible. Such events include:

Military conflicts, and war
Supply chain disruptions
Restrictions to business and consumers (think public health orders, limits to movement etc)
Energy crisis
Cyber attack
International trade war
Natural disasters
Company accident

Time, Early Signals and Your People
There’s another important dimension to that visualisation – time. The lead time between knowing a disruptive event will happen and when it first impacts your business is called detection lead time. It’s the warning period.

Think of trends, such as cyber security. The worldwide move to tighten data obligations will affect Australian businesses, even small-to-medium-sized ones. The Productivity Commission and the Federal Government have foreshadowed this need to boost privacy. While cyber attacks are an unknown threat to each business, tightening laws is a given.

Be sure to look internally as well. Consider, the ‘risk fingerprint’ of each of your staff members. That’s the mix of their personality traits, experiences and social context that feeds into their identity and how they behave. Wucker writes about this in her other book, You Are What You Risk.

Think of the personal qualities of being risk averse, sensitive or even risk blind and how that influences their perceptions of threats and opportunities. Could you be making assumptions about their beliefs about and reactions to risks?

For example, discourage groupthink by sharing safety information across your workplace. That builds a culture encouraging staff to comment and contribute from different perspectives.

Updating Your Risk Management and Insurance
So what does all this mean for your practical risk and insurance decisions this year?

You might consider:

1.Refreshing your risk register using a grey rhino lens, identifying a small set of high impact, plausible disruptions such as another infectious disease outbreak, a major cyber incident, a lengthy supply chain interruption or a climate related disaster.
2.Reviewing your business continuity plan to check it still reflects hybrid working, cloud dependence and key supplier changes.
3.Checking whether your current policies respond to non physical damage events, for example cyber incidents, denial of access or supply chain disruption, rather than only fire and storm.
4.Looking at specialist cover where it suits your circumstances, such as broader cyber and privacy protection, management liability for regulatory exposures, and tailored extensions for infectious disease or event disruption where available.

Speak with Austbrokers Terrace specialists about your business insurance.

The post Is Your Business Ready for the Next Grey Rhino? appeared first on Austbrokers Terrace Insurance | Adelaide | Melbourne.

Wishing you and your families a happy, safe and prosperous New Year. The team at Austbrokers Terrace look forward to welcoming you in 2026.

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With best wishes to you and your families at this festive time from the team at Austbrokers Terrace.

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As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.

For the Fallen, Laurence Binyon 1914

The post May their spirit live on….in the generations to come appeared first on Austbrokers Terrace Insurance | Adelaide | Melbourne.

Your business can change a lot in a year – expanding, shifting online, hiring staff, or upgrading equipment.

Yet most SMEs forget to update their insurance when things change. If you set it and forget it, you could be left exposed when something unexpected happens. For example, a tradie leasing new equipment may need additional liability extensions. A café offering online orders may face new cyber exposures.

That’s where a quick annual risk review helps ensure your cover still fits your operations, assets, people, and risks.

Why Staying Current is Vital

According to the Insurance Council of Australia, about 83% of property owners are underinsured, lacking enough cover to fully replace what they lose.

Rising rebuild costs and supply delays widen the gap in many areas. The Australian Small Business and Family Enterprises Ombudsman also warns that underinsurance is a key reason many small businesses struggle to recover after a major loss.

Meanwhile, natural disasters remain a concern, as do regulatory shifts, changes to strata titles, and compliance laws. Environmental and ESG (environmental, social, governance) reporting risks are growing issues in some industries.

And with premiums increasing sharply in 2024 due to inflation and higher claims, it’s worth checking if your policy still offers both value and adequate protection.

A broker or adviser can help you reassess your policy annually, ensuring it reflects your current risk profile, not last year’s business model.

Cyber Risks Are Changing Fast

This year, cyber risks overtook storms and fire as the top concern for SMEs, according to industry research.

More than 70% of SMEs see cyber security as a major business threat, yet half spend less than $500 a year on prevention tools. But software and staff training aren’t enough. That’s where insurance becomes critical. The Australian Cyber Security Centre continues to report rising incidents of ransomware, phishing, and scams. The average cyber incident costs small businesses over $50,000, not including reputational damage, legal claims, or lost revenue.

Cyber insurance won’t prevent an attack, but it can cover expert response, customer notification, and business interruption. Without it, even a minor breach can lead to a major fallout.

What Your Annual Risk Health Check Should Include

Your broker or adviser can walk you through a tailored review of risk management.

This includes:

Checking that your sums insured for buildings, equipment, stock, and digital infrastructure reflect today’s rebuild or replacement costs
Ensuring cover accounts for new risks, such as like cybercrime, remote work, or leased assets
Reviewing exclusions, especially if you’ve added new products, services, suppliers, or sales channels
Monitoring legal obligations and regulatory changes that could affect liability

The Cost of Inaction

Three out of four SMEs that change how they operate don’t update their insurance.

Last summer, one in six Australian households was affected by property damage. For businesses, disaster recovery costs can escalate fast, and underinsurance compounds the damage. Insufficient cover can lead to long claim delays, extended downtime, lost customer trust, and financial stress. And when gaps are only found at claim time, the consequences can be devastating.

Speak with the specialists at Austbrokers Terrace about an annual review for your business.

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