2 June 2026
You can almost hear the sigh. “He’s doing commissions again.” Yep.
The Age put a strata kickback on its front page this weekend. A strata manager, on a recording the paper says it’s reviewed, allegedly asking a contractor for a cut to rig a tender. If it stands up, it’s a straight betrayal of the owners paying the bill. I won’t name the firm or the manager. The paper has, and that’s their call to carry. The allegation is theirs to prove, and my point isn’t about one person anyway.
Everyone agrees that’s indefensible, which is what makes it the easy part. Nobody’s going to defend a bloke caught on tape. The recording didn’t make it wrong, though. Doing it made it wrong. The tape just took away his deniability.
What’s worth more thought is the lazy reaction to it: that this is how the industry works. It isn’t. It’s not happening in my business, and I’ve got colleagues and competitors I’d trust with my own building who’d tell you the same about theirs. The behaviour on that tape is the exception, and it’s both unlawful and rare. Say that plainly.
But trust is a fragile thing to build a sector on, and “it only happens sometimes” means nothing to the owners it happened to. One case that makes the papers costs every honest manager a little of the trust they’ve earned. That’s why most of us being honest is exactly the reason the few who aren’t should bother us more, not less. I’m not interested in tarring everyone. The opposite.
Set the kickback aside for a moment, because there’s a second question that has nothing to do with anyone breaking the law, and owners should understand it. It’s about money that moves completely legally.
Commissions aren’t banned in NSW. Not yet, anyway. The recent reforms tightened disclosure, lifted penalties, and closed one gap, so a manager can’t take a commission when the owners corporation arranges its own insurance. Past that, a commission can still be perfectly legal, provided it’s properly disclosed and, in a lot of cases, approved by owners at a general meeting. Properly disclosed. Not buried in a schedule.
So this money doesn’t need to hide. Some firms will tell you hand on heart that they don’t take commissions, and for plenty of them that’s true. What sometimes goes unsaid is whether they own, or sit under a group that owns, an insurance brokerage. The brokerage takes the commission and it flows up to the parent. Same money, same conflict, just a different envelope.
I’m not alone in noticing. In March the NSW Productivity and Equality Commission gave government its final report on strata commissions, and it named this exact risk: the growing vertical integration between strata firms and the service providers they use, insurance broking included, where the connections create what it called “commission-like incentives” to steer work to related entities. It also made the point that banning commissions and stopping there won’t be enough, because managers and brokers can adapt by “shifting benefits into related-party arrangements, re-labelling payments” and keeping the same conflict under a new name. Put simply, you drop the word “commission,” add a “service fee” of roughly the same size, and the conflict survives the rename. Their conclusion was that disclosure on its own doesn’t fix any of this. You have to take the incentive away.
And they didn’t just diagnose it. They recommended prohibiting strata managers from taking commissions, restricting the brokers and suppliers behind them from doing the same, with a three-year transition to get there. The finding was blunt about the upside: a shift to fee-for-service would lower costs, improve competition and service, and rebuild trust, and not only for owners but across NSW.
The obvious objection is that you’ll just see the management fee go up to make up the difference. The Commission looked at that too. Managers already working on fee-for-service are reporting lower total costs for owners, because the saving comes out of the premium rather than your pocket. The model works. It’s just harder to hide things inside.
The direction’s pretty clear now. Fair Trading has tightened the rules. SCA, the industry’s own body, is moving members off insurance commissions to fee-for-service from January 2026. The Commissioner has signalled he intends to legislate. The firms running these models can see what’s coming.
For what it’s worth, here’s where Bettr Strata sits. We take no insurance commissions, no contractor referral fees, no rebates. There’s no brokerage in the background and no parent company taking a clip of your levies. Our fee is our fee, and it’s the whole of what we earn from your building.
You shouldn’t have to take my word for it. Ask whoever manages your building four questions, and get the answers in writing.
Do you receive any commission on our insurance? Do you take referral fees or rebates from contractors? Does any company you own, or that owns you, earn from either? And will you put all of that in writing?
An honest manager won’t flinch at any of them.
And yes, I’ll keep going on about it. Not because everyone’s at it, because most aren’t, but because in a business that runs on trust, even one is too many.
John Martin (JM) | Founder & Managing Director | Bettr Strata
General information and my own views only. Not legal or financial advice, and not a statement about any particular firm. The media report referred to describes an allegation that’s yet to be tested. Owners should check their own agency agreement and records, or get advice on their own circumstances.