Post magazine – 12 March 2015

In this issue, our Insurance Census is back, looking at diversity within the general insurance sector in terms of age, ethnicity and gender.

It has been two years since Post publishd its first Census, and we have now revisited this piece of work to look at how things have changed. In the coming weeks we will consider age, ethnicity and why diversity in the general insurance sector matters. We start this week with the issue of gender.

In the news, the days of insurers targeting policy sales via outbound call centres are “long gone”, according to industry insiders; insurance experts have predicted more cost-cutting and consolidation among insurers in 2015; and the risk management industry has backed a call from global broker Marsh to make business interruption policies more relevant to modern customer demands.

Aviva’s Dave Lovely and Dual’s Hazel Beveridge are in the C-Suite. Lovely claims that changes are needed to make genuine industrial deafness claims quicker and easier to settle, while Beveridge talks up actuaries, arguing that although among the less understood roles in the insurance industry, actuarial skills are of enormous value. Fraud Focus returns, looking at how fraud detection techniques may just be picking up the same old scams, which are dying breeds.

We talk to Steve Bamforth. A one-company man, he became CEO of Liverpool-based Griffiths & Armour aged just 38. Now, with a strategy of acquiring teams rather than businesses, he gets a buzz from giving youth a chance.

Having been granted Royal Assent last month, the replacement for the Marine Insurance Act 1906, the Insurance Act, will come into force in August 2016. In collaboration with law firm BLM, we brought together insurance, broking, legal and risk management experts to discuss the challenges the Act will pose for the insurance sector. Katie Marriner reports on the roundtable discussion.

Car manufacturers may be about to muscle in on motor insurers business, but it might not be all bad news for the sector, as Francesca Nyman finds out.

Finally, Hill Dickinson’s Andrew Schutte and Andrew Hill provide a lgeal update, arguing a structured approach is essential to limit aggregation exposure as a result of the cyber race.

Enjoy the read!

If you do not have a device to view the issue on then you can download the latest PDF here.