The latest travel insurance movements show distribution capability and customer duty are becoming inseparable, with fair customer outcomes driving sustainable growth and competitive advantage, writes Hartman Advisory’s Matt Endycott.

It is unusual for a sector to visibly change shape inside a single quarter.

Travel insurance in Australia and New Zealand did exactly that in the first half of 2026, and for a profession built on making good on a promise at the point of need, the speed of the change matters less than what sits beneath it.

Allianz Partners agreed to acquire a large part of nib’ s ANZ travel portfolio, including the Travel Insurance Direct brand.

Meanwhile, Generali unified Europ Assistance and Generali Employee Benefits under a single global brand, Redion, having earlier become a licensed general insurer in Australia. Zurich continued to invest behind Cover-More.

None of these moves is isolated, and for those of us who work in the sector, understanding the shared pressure behind them matters more than any single headline.

The economics behind the change

For most of the sector’s modern history, travel insurers competed on product, price and underwriting.

Those things still matter, but they are no longer where the contest is decided.

The cost of competing effectively, across digital capability, embedded distribution, claims technology, medical assistance, compliance and customer experience, has risen sharply.

Investment of that order increasingly favours scale, and scale is what consolidation buys.

The industry is not consolidating because bigger is necessarily better. It is consolidating because the entry price for staying competitive has gone up.

Relationship shift

Alongside that, the distribution side has matured. Travel brands now understand the value of their own customer relationships and expect far more from an insurance partner than a policy and a commission rate.

They look for integration, governance, reporting and genuine partnership. The relationship has shifted from supplier and reseller toward something closer to a joint commercial venture.

It would be easy to read all of this as a purely commercial story, in which distribution has simply replaced product as the thing that matters. That reading misses the more important half.

Distribution is becoming decisive precisely because of what it is being asked to deliver: the right product, properly understood, to the right customer, with cover that performs when it is needed.

Travel insurance is a deceptively complex product. Coverage limits, excesses, exclusions, pre existing condition terms and regional definitions all materially change what a customer is actually buying.

Distribution and customer duty are now one capability

The regulatory environment is rising to meet this, and it is increasingly central to the commercial story rather than incidental to it.

Design and distribution obligations, target market determinations, the duty to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation, the General Insurance Code of Practice and a sustained focus on value, claims handling and fair treatment have all raised the bar.

The expectation is no longer simply that a product is sold compliantly.

It is that the product is appropriate for the customer it reaches, and that the customer is treated fairly across the whole lifecycle, from quote to claim.

As distribution moves into embedded and partner led channels, regulatory responsibility moves with it.

Insurers cannot outsource their customer duty to a distribution partner, and partners increasingly cannot distribute without the governance, training and oversight those obligations demand.

The capability to distribute well and the capability to meet the regulatory standard are becoming the same capability.

For practitioners, that is a significant professional shift. It places product governance, target market discipline and claims fairness at the heart of the commercial conversation, not at its edge.

Customer outcomes as the foundation

The organisations that lead will be those that treat customer outcomes not as a compliance cost but as the foundation of the commercial model itself. The two reinforce one another.

Claims paid fairly and quickly, assistance that genuinely helps in a crisis, and products customers understand and trust are what produce renewals, referrals, partner confidence and brand strength.

In an embedded world the customer’ s experience of the insurance is increasingly indistinguishable from the travel brand whose name sits in front of it, which raises the stakes for everyone in the chain and makes fair treatment a shared professional responsibility.

Holding commercial ambition and customer duty together, each strengthening the other rather than being traded off, is the balance the most capable operators strike.

It is also the balance that regulators, partners and customers will increasingly expect.

As the sector continues to realign, that discipline is likely to be one of the defining marks of a well run travel insurance business, and a worthy focus for the profession that supports it.

About Matt Endycott and Hartmann Advisory

Matt Endycott is Founder and Managing Director of Hartmann Advisory, bringing more than 20 years’ experience across travel, travel insurance, aviation and strategic partnerships.

He has held senior distribution and partnership leadership roles with businesses at the centre of the travel insurance sector’s recent transformation, including Allianz Partners, nib Travel and Europ Assistance (now Redion). Most recently, he led a multi-market travel insurance program spanning Australia, New Zealand, North America, the United Kingdom and Europe, including the global Flight Centre Travel Group partnership across five markets.

Founded in 2026, Hartmann Advisory works with travel brands and insurers on commercial growth, partnership strategy, market expansion and business transformation across Australia, New Zealand and international markets.

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