There’s a couple of paradoxes at the heart of the latest CHU Strata Index, the insurer’s annual trawl through the attitudes of 1000 strata owners around the country: the less control people feel they have over their building, the less likely they are to hire someone to help them get it back.

Meanwhile, we have no idea what insurance brokers actually do, but we don’t want them to do it anyway.

CHU, Australia’s biggest strata insurance underwriter, has just released the second year of its Index, and the headline finding is that a sense of control is doing most of the heavy lifting when it comes to whether owners are happy with the professionals around them: managers, insurers, brokers, the lot.

The kicker is that feeling out of control is also one of the main reasons owners give for going it alone. It’s cited as a factor in three of the top four gripes about strata living, and it’s the reason self-managed schemes most often give for not hiring a manager in the first place.

But here’s the twist: the owners who actually lean on strata professionals the most are the happiest of the lot. CHU found 82 per cent satisfaction among the most engaged owners, against just 57 per cent for those who keep everyone at arm’s length. The more help people accept, the more in control they feel, not less.

CHU chief executive Kimberley Jonsson reckons the fix is engagement rather than just more emails. “There is a real opportunity here to give owners back a sense of control, helping them understand what’s required in strata living to make decisions with confidence,” she says, adding that it’s less about communication for its own sake and more about bringing owners in as “active participants in their community.”

One number that’ll ring true for a lot of committees: only two in three schemes have a relevant maintenance action plan. Jonsson calls maintenance the obvious place for strata pros to prove their worth – assuming anyone’s watching.

Owners don’t know what a broker does

The report’s other big finding is a genuine gap between what insurance brokers do and what owners think they do. Two-thirds of owners who’ve used a broker say they trust them and reckon they’re worth it – but nearly half still went and bought their insurance direct anyway.

CHU puts that down to confusion rather than distrust: half the owners surveyed couldn’t clearly separate a broker’s job from a strata manager’s, with plenty crediting brokers for things like coordinating maintenance or managing the sinking fund – jobs that have nothing to do with insurance at all. Muddle the roles and, unsurprisingly, the value of independent advice gets harder to see.

For what it’s worth, separate research from the brokers’ own body, NIBA, found the vast majority of their clients rate them highly on claims and trust – for context, take that with the appropriate grain of salt, considering it’s from an industry association’s own commissioned research.

Actives, Pragmatists and the Disengaged

CHU has sorted owners into three tribes. Actives are the strata nerds who understand the risk trade-offs and want the detail. Pragmatists just want reassurance that the essentials are handled. The Disengaged trust nobody much and want short, sharp updates telling them the building isn’t about to fall down.

And here’s a useful note for the “just keep your head down” brigade of strata managers: 64 per cent of owners told CHU they’d like more frequent communication from their strata manager – which, if your building’s newsletter output currently amounts to one AGM notice a year, is a fairly loud hint.

SCA Australasia president Joshua Baldwin, whose members stand to benefit rather directly if owners decide they need more professional help, was predictably supportive of the findings: “Strong owner engagement and professional management are not competing objectives,” he said. “Together, they create better maintained buildings, more resilient communities and stronger long-term outcomes.”

The full 2026 CHU Strata Index is online at chu.com.au/resource-hub/chu-strata-index-2026, if you want to see whether your own strata committee falls into the Active, Pragmatist or Disengaged camp – and whether that maintenance plan actually exists or just lives in someone’s head.