Claims Forum 2010

Andrew Lowe

Commercial Director, Intermediary Channels Household & Life, RBS Insurance

Biography

Andrew is responsible for the home, travel and protection insurance provided by RBS Insurance through partners and brokers including NatWest, RBS, Prudential, Nationwide, Virgin, AA and Saga. Prior to this Andrew spent 5 years managing the Direct Line home insurance business. He has a background in banking and has worked in a variety of roles in Barclays, Lloyds TSB, Flemings and Hill Samuel. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers and was the President of the ifs School of Finance in London for the ten years to 2009. He completed a full time MBA at Cranfield School of Management in 1997.

Mark Cliff

Managing Director, Fortis Insurance

Biography

Mark Cliff joined Fortis Insurance Limited as the Managing Director on 13th October 2008, building on the successful and award-winning general insurance business in the UK and focusing on optimising its position in the market as a leading provider of customer-focused insurance solutions. Mark is responsible for leading the development of Fortis’ core competencies in underwriting and claims management, across the Gloucester and Eastleigh offices, with a continued commitment to distributing via Fortis’ extensive broker network, intermediaries and affinity partners.

Mark joined from AXA Insurance, where he held the position of Markets, Managing Director, with responsibility for all distribution channels, commercial branch operations, as well as customer service and marketing.

Mark has a very strong track record within the Insurance industry with previous senior management roles at Royal and SunAlliance, and Royal Insurance. He had a wealth of knowledge of our market as well as active contribution to the industry, through the Association of British Insurers and was chairman of Polaris, and a member of the Motor Insurer Bureau board.

Peter Horton

GI Operations Director, LV=

Biography

Peter Horton is the Operations Director of LV= General Insurance and, as part of his role, he has overall responsibility for LV=’s claims operation of over 800 staff. Peter has been in the insurance industry for 30 years and was a founder of Direct Line, which transformed the entire industry, along with Peter Wood and Martin Long.

Peter is an ebullient character; well known in the industry for his enthusiasm, knowledge and commitment to his job. Peter’s approach is one of focusing and developing people to offer the best possible claims experience to customers.

Peter has made a huge difference at LV=. The claims operation has changed dramatically in the last three years. In 2006 the company had a poor reputation for its claims service, high fraud rates and over 30% staff turnover. LV=’s claims operation is now one of the highest rated in the industry, winning several awards over the last 12 months including a Which peoples choice, a Personal Finance awards for customer service and has 92% satisfaction scores amongst its customers.

Some key initiatives Peter has lead at LV= include:

• Cost savings of £25m by introducing new claims systems and management tools
• A project to bring in-house a major outsourced part of the claims unit which resulted in major cost savings and 150 people recruited from WNS in Bristol

Previous experience includes:

• June 2003 – June 2005: Managing director of claims at RBSI managing three million claims a year, overseeing 8000 staff with an annual spend of £3.4 billion. During his time in this role Peter was responsible for the integration of the Churchill Group and Direct Line Group claims operations under the banner of RBS Insurance.
• 1993 – 2003: Operations director of Churchill. Peter ran several industry-leading projects whilst in this role including achieving lowest average claims cost across the industry, saving several million pounds whilst ensuring Churchill Insurance was publicly acknowledged as providing the best service across the industry.
• 1989 – 1993: Operations Director at Churchill. Peter was a founding director at Churchill responsible for Claims and customer service. During this role he personally developed and introduced the claims system which was widely acknowledged as the best in the market place. Benefits of the system included a lower loss ratio than competitors, enhanced relationships with suppliers and millions of pounds of cost savings each year. He also oversaw the introduction of the first claims unit in the UK insurance industry to have courtesy cars, faxing from screens and no claim forms.
• 1986: Claims Manager at the start up of Direct Line

Rob Smale

Claims and Operations Director, Fortis Insurance

Biography

Married with 3 daughters, living in Hampshire. I started my working life as a mining engineer before joining the insurance industry in 1996.

I joined Fortis in 2003.

The Fortis Claims and Operations team numbers 900fte and looks after the claims, intermediary and partner policy servicing and Age Concern sales and service activities. This year we are working with TescoBank to create a claims department dedicated to the new joint venture between TescoBank and Fortis which starts trading at the end of 2010. We have also recently started a partnership with Aioi to provide motor insurance to Toyota GB customers.As Claims and Operations Director in a company selling insurance products via intermediaries and affinity partners one of my main preoccupations is to how to differentiate Fortis. The teams I lead aspire to, and achieve, ambitious levels of service and efficiency. We seek to do "stuff differently" and have created a distinctive “Fortis Claims and Operations Way.” Customers, intermediaries, affinity partners and suppliers confirm this distinctiveness. The key contributor to our distinctiveness comes from embedding processes that help us understand what it is like for customers to pull value from Fortis. My most admired company is Toyota despite their recent difficulties. The Fortis Claims and Operations Way has it’s roots in the Toyota Production System and we see Toyota’s recent plight as a timely reminder of how important it is to stick to what makes you good and not get distracted.

2011 will see Fortis become “Ageas”.

David Williams

Managing Director – Claims, AXA

Biography

David has over 20 Years experience in General Insurance, roles including Chief Commercial Underwriter at one of AXA’s largest branches, Reinsurance Manager, Casualty Insurance Manager, before moving to claims in 2003.

He was heavily involved in the government and ABI responses to the ‘Liability Crisis’ in his previous role as Casualty Manager, and continues his lobbying work as the insurance industry looks to remove unnecessary costs and delay from the current adversarial compensation process.

David is a non Executive Director of AXA Assistance UK, a Board Member of the CII / CILA Faculty of Claims, and was a Director of Thatcham, the Insurance Industry Motor Vehicle Research Institute for four years.

He is a member of the AXA Group Claims Board and has represented the UK on Asbestos, Health, Pollution and Fraud issues. He speaks regularly at conferences and other events in the UK and Europe on a variety of subjects including most recently improving customer satisfaction, flooding and climate change.

David has also appeared on BBC Breakfast TV, BBC and Channel 4 News, as well as Radio 4’s ‘Today’ Programme, being interviewed on topics varying from Compensation Culture to Business Crime.

David originally hails from Bristol but now lives in Suffolk with his wife Catherine and 2 young sons Evan & Ryan.

Andrew McBride

Claims Director, European Operations, QBE

Biography

Andrew joined QBE in 2005. He has over 20 years experience within the insurance industry, beginning his career with Guardian Royal Exchange and holding various operational and strategic claims roles within that Group of companies. Following its acquisition by AXA in 1999 Andrew held claims management positions within AXA Global Risks and AXA Corporate Solutions and worked within the AXA Group both in the UK and overseas until he moved to Aon in 2002 as Director of Claims Management in UK. In 2005 he was appointed Claims Director of QBE Insurance (Europe), QBE’s company market operation and in 2007 became Claims Director of QBE European Operations. He is responsible for all Claims operations within QBE’s European businesses, with claims team based within the UK and across 17 counties throughout continental Europe as well as in Australia and Canada.