As Maven Public Sector celebrates a successful decade of trading, it seems an excellent time for me to (probably) end my almost 50-year insurance career, which has been entirely dedicated to the public sector.
I had no intention of entering insurance, my original plan was to study engineering, however having looked at the course syllabus it contained a lot of maths, so plan B was adopted!
I saw an advert for a trainee insurance clerk in Edinburgh and went for an interview (which entirely consisted of a conversation about golf) then started with Municipal Mutual (MMI). Having decided that producing policy documents was not for me, I quickly moved into claims and found my vocation.
MMI was a wonderful place to work and I had several roles, including two stints in Birmingham and two in London. A great deal of case law comes from MMI cases and I was fortunate to be involved in many interesting ones. These included two cases that went to the House of Lords. I moved from claims into management in 1990 but have kept my claims bias ever since.
Sadly MMI ceased trading in 1992, and I worked briefly for Zurich Municipal (ZM) before jointly founding Risk Management Partners (RMP) with Kaz Janowicz in 1994. Our aim was to add competition to the market.
RMP pioneered the Third-Party Administrator (TPA) concept in the UK for public sector clients. This enabled claims management to be unbundled from an insurer’s claims service and be purchased by public sector bodies. They were adopting self-insurance retentions, funding their attritional claims efficiently and managing these losses, which they were self-funding.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time at RMP. In the early years that meant driving 50,000 miles a year as we developed the business. Many of these miles were made up of hand delivering paper tenders in unmarked envelopes that were taken to an authority’s HQ by a set time, usually noon. The package would be sealed and timestamped and a receipt issued: too many with a minute to spare!
On leaving RMP in 2013 I anticipated retirement and spent much of that year on the golf course. However, that same year insurance capacity withdrew from the UK public sector, most acutely for casualty coverage for larger councils and police authorities, so I joined Aon in the public sector team in late 2013.
Nigel Cooper and Bill Sulman played a large part in tempting me back to work. It quickly became apparent there was a need for another carrier to offer a wider choice. That set the scene for the launch of Maven Public Sector (MPS), operating within Aon Underwriting Managers (AUM) the division of Aon which acts on behalf of insurers, which is operationally separated from Aon’s broking activities.
It really does not seem like ten years since we brought Maven to life with capacity sourced from insurers who had a desire to write public sector business. Insurers had the confidence to do so through MPS which offered public sector underwriting expertise, bespoke policy wordings and an understanding of the procurement process. Crawfords, or Broadspire as their casualty claims management team was called then, were appointed to add claims expertise.
In the early days it was just Amy Cundell as bid coordinator and myself as MD with Mike Thane then joining us as Underwriting Manager. The team is much larger now, Derek Archer succeeded Mike on his retirement, and I look forward to handing over the MD mantle to Adam Bayliss who will very ably lead the team forward.
From the outset MPS has been all about providing an underwriter led service designed to sustain long-term relationships with our clients. It is very gratifying to see this bear fruit with MPS now an established supplier in all major lines of business.
I am especially grateful to ALARM, which MPS took an early decision to support through our overall Platinum Sponsorship and Gold Conference sponsorship. ALARM is the vehicle which enables the promotion and dissemination of risk management training and development and has been instrumental in helping embed risk management in the UK public sector.
I have been involved with ALARM since its beginnings and remember early national conferences at Warwick University. I was involved in getting ALARM Scotland Conference up and running with the first one at Stirling Management Centre back in 1996. Fittingly, this year’s event was held at the same venue!
I was able to travel to several PRIMA conferences over the years and it helped me to see firsthand how public sector risk is managed in the USA. The bond between ALARM and PRIMA is an important one.
I look forward to so much in 2025: spending time with family, especially my grandkids, travel, and hopefully reducing my golf handicap! I will of course miss the contact with all the inspirational and dedicated people I have had the pleasure to work with over the years, many of whom have become personal friends.
