Expert insight, analysis and commentary across the entire protection industry.
by ProtectionReview 04/10/11
Test-Achats can be good news for consumers and the Insurance sector This year’s Protection Review included a measured and informative piece (by Helen Tilley, Rona Doyle and Lucian Camp) on the ECJ ruling on gender. And there was another good article on the topic (by Joanne Wells) in the Hannover Life Re newsletter, infocus. Comments and conversations around the Protection Review Conference, however, were more emotion-laden. I got the impression that the widely shared view was that Test-Achats was a toxic combination of European bureaucracy and political correctness, and this also seems to be the Protection sector’s view if…
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by ProtectionReview 21/09/11
This quote, from Peter Drucker, the inspirational writer, thinker and pioneer in management philosophy, often comes to mind in conversations I have with insurers. For an industry whose economic viability relies upon a sound understanding of statistics, actuarial calculations and probability, it often surprises me just which areas insurers tend to focus on when it comes to measuring and therefore managing claims. Let me give you an example. When I ask some insurers about their claims performance and about their loss ratio, most simply say they do not use their loss ratio to measure claims. When you…
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by ProtectionReview 21/09/11
Seven years ago, after 40 years in the insurance industry, I left corporate life to form my own business consultancy. I wanted to try something different. Having built up a network of contacts in other sectors of health and welfare provision, I looked for where I thought I could make a difference and also see some tangible results more quickly than is sometimes possible in a long term insurance environment. I worked with a series of clients anxious to establish a role for themselves against the background of the government’s health and welfare reforms. The atmosphere was usually…
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by ProtectionReview 06/09/11
Can a Leopard change its spots? That depends on the colour of its original spots and whether it has a changed view of life. Talking to some advisers recently, they were suggesting the interest in Long Term Care funding was lessening. Which got me thinking, why? · Dilnot? Not an issue for Joe Public’s family in some sense as the need is still the same, today. Plus, of course, when (or if) will the recommendations be adopted and in what form? So we can discount that as an effect in the short term. · Southern Cross? It won’t have helped,…
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by ProtectionReview 23/08/11
In early August London and other UK cities burned, the torch lit by wanton vandalism and lack of self discipline. This, of course provides yet another headache for the insurance sector at the claims end of the equation. But what of the other end, the creative, market-responsive supply side? As the flames enveloped British cities I read a fascinating piece in the the Economist; called 'Turning Silver into Gold', it focused on the way creative thinking and marketing is being called into action in Japan, by retailers having to come to terms with the realities of a disturbingly large population of…
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