Post magazine - 20 June 2013

Following the news that Allianz CEO Andrew Torrance is bound for the States after a "decade of success" at the insurer, Post spoke to other insurers and brokers to find out what they thought of Andrew's time in the industry.

It has been announced that Jon Dye will succeed Torrance; raising the question of who will fulfil the vacant retail division general manager role he will vacate. Find out who the industry thinks is the front runner.

In other news, insurance industry insiders have urged the government to close a loophole in the referral fee ban to prevent firms from operating "against the spirit" of recent civil litigation reforms; personal injury law firms have been advised against leaving themselves open to secondary litigation by undervaluing serious catastrophic injury claims by millions of pounds; and Post understands that brokers are including the costs of increased Financial Services Compensation Scheme levies in "administration charges" passed on to customers.

In addition to a round-up of the winners from the Post Claims Awards, Leigh Jackson reports on the headlines from the Airmic 2013 conference in Brighton.

Elsewhere in the issue, Parabis Claims Solutions' sales and marketing director Eddie Longworth comments on why appealing to the casual fraudster's conscience won't work and a more direct approach is needed. Sticking with opinion, RSA's Nick Skinner explains why companies that can't collaborate with customers on the front line may as well kiss them goodbye; and Arthur J Gallagher International's Sarah Dalgarno looks at the problem of transparency for transparency's sake.

Questgates managing director Chris Hall talks to Post reporter Mark Sands about the risks he took to buy the loss adjuster 10-years ago, and his hopes for growth in the coming decade in this week's interview.

As Post went to press news broke that Latvian insurer Balva had been ordered to wind up operations by Latvia's Financial and Capital Markets Commission. With solicitors and the wider industry preparing for the fallout from the scandal, Sam Barrett asks if predictions that some firms could find themselves on the breadline because of this are right.

With payment protection insurance complaints putting a seemingly never-ending financial strain on the industry, Mark Sands asks if the product can ever bounce back; and research by Home & Legacy suggests there is little consensus in what constitutes a mid- or high-net-worth customer, but what does this mean for the market? Barry O'Neill finds out; and Edmund Tirbutt investigates if Solvency II will ever emerge, and if it will look anything like it was initially intended.

Enjoy the read!