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

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

Colin Burton

Senior Business Development Manager, Wipro Technologies

Biography

Matt Robson

Solutions Delivery Director, Capita Assurance and Testing

Biography

Matt Robson is the Solutions Delivery Director for Capita Assurance and Testing, having held senior client side QA and Testing roles within Financial Services and Banking. He is expert in building capabilities that are focused on business outcomes and provide measurable benefit to an organisation across large-scale change delivery.

Matt was previously an Academic Psychologist, and a British Army officer, both of which have shaped the way he approaches problem solving, leadership and change.

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”.

Graham Johnson

Transformation Director, Ecclesiastical

Biography

Graham Johnson is a skilled business executive with over 20 years’ experience leading change programmes for UK and international businesses. He has successfully launched innovative new businesses, integrated worldwide business functions and introduced change across organisations. He has worked with a range of companies in various sectors including British Telecom, National Westminster Bank and Premier Farnell.

Graham is currently Transformation Director at Ecclesiastical Insurance, a leading specialist insurer. He is responsible for driving and managing change and strengthening culture across the business.

Bala Muralidharan

Head of Insurance Practice, Tata Consultancy Services

Biography

Bala is the Head of Insurance Practice at TCS. In his current position, he has responsibility for managing the delivery of Insurance business expertise throughout TCS and to its customers. He is also responsible for positioning domain and solution offerings to Insurance customers across the globe. Bala works closely with Insurance sector analysts to conceptualise innovative offerings to meet both current and future market trends.

Bala has over 17 years of experience in IT and Consulting. He has been working with major UK Insurance customers for over a decade managing the customer relationship with several large insurers and has been instrumental in winning a number of major outsourcing deals.

His personal interests include travel and photography.

Pete Tart

European Claims Vendor Management Director, Zurich

Biography

Peter has spent 22 years in the Insurance market specialising in UK Claims and European Claims Vendor Management. Peter joined Zurich Financial Services in 2003 having spent the previous 16 years in Claims & Vendor Management with another Global Insurer having worked through a number of different Claims roles.

Peter now heads up Zurich's European Claims Vendor Management team that manages all Claims Vendors across Zurich’s 13 European business units.

Peter is also a member of the Global Claims Vendor management team that is focussed on developing internal claims supply chain management best practices, procurement and process synergies and global sourcing opportunities.

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.

Simon Ball

Chief Executive, Coverzones

Biography

Simon Ball is Chief Executive Officer at Coverzones, the business insurance comparison website. Simon has over 20 years experience within the IT and e-commerce sectors having worked with online retailers such as Lastminute.com at the height of the dot.com boom, as well as more established multichannel retailers subsequently. From 2002 onwards, prior to founding Coverzones, Simon worked in the commercial lines insurance marketplace advising major players on e-commerce and e-business best practice.

Ken Hogg

Insurance Sector Director, FSA

Biography

Ken joined the FSA in July 2009 after over 20 years in the industry.

Most recently Ken was interim CFO at MGM Advantage. Prior to that he was COO at AIG Life. The earlier part of Ken’s career was spent at Scottish Equitable, and its parent AEGON. This period saw Ken undertake various executive roles including Company Actuary (for European offshore subsidiary), Marketing Director, Director of Industry Development and most recently, leading sales and marketing for AEGON’s Indian JV life company.

Ken is a qualified actuary, and has a 1st class honour’s degree in Actuarial Mathematics and Statistics from HeriotWatt University.

Brendan Devine

Group Managing Director, Kwik-Fit Insurance Services

Biography

Dr Alexander Scott

Chief Executive Officer, Chartered Insurance Institute

Biography

Sandy Scott graduated in medicine and surgery from Aberdeen University and spent his first ten years in the Royal Army Medical Corps achieving the rank of Major. He then joined the Department of Health where his responsibilities included regulating the pharmaceutical industry in the United Kingdom. In 1989 he joined the medical insurer PPP and in 1995 became Deputy Managing Director. During this period he was also Chairman of the ABI's Medical Insurance Committee.

In 1997 he joined Ingram Micro, a US based technology distribution company, as its Managing Director.

Sandy has recently joined the FSA’s Professional Standards Advisory Group. He is a member of the QAA’s Board Committee on University Degree Awarding Powers, and also the Advisory Board of CASS Business School as well as being on the External Advisory Committee of the Faculty of Actuarial Science & Statistics. He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Insurance Times. In 2006 he joined The Prince’s Trust Insurance Leadership Group.

He is a Past Chairman of the Institute for Global Insurance Education (IGIE), a Director of the Personal Finance Society, an Honorary Secretary of the Insurance Charities, a former International Governor of the American Institute for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters (AICPCU) and Immediate Past President of the London Phoenix Orchestra. He is a Past Chairman of the European Financial Planning Association (EFPA).

Angus Tucker

Past President, Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters

Biography

John Salmon

Partner, Pinsent Masons

Biography