Biba blog: Mission Hoban accomplished

Arriving back at Biba with my colleague Leighann Burtrand from the Conservative party’s annual conference in Birmingham, we were both exhausted after what had been a truly exciting party conference.

Big Society, the spending review, the child allowance announcement and the prospects of the coalition were the subjects that dominated conversation both in and out of the conference hall.

But not for us: Biba’s main objective was to target Mark Hoban MP, financial secretary to the Treasury, who is the main architect for the FSA’s replacement. Hoban also has influence over the reform of the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) and is the minister who will be closely involved with implementing the Insurance Mediation Directive (IMD) revision in the UK, which is the single most important piece of law to affect insurance brokers.

Our mission was to ensure that Hoban understood Biba’s position, so that any future decisions he makes affecting brokers would be as informed as possible. We had refined our ‘elevator pitch’ – or those 15 seconds of conversation everyone should have ready in which to put across their main lobbying points, just in case they should ever travel in a lift with their decision-maker of choice.

Concerned that Biba was going to struggle to have time to cover our four main lobbying points with Hoban later that day, we experienced a moment not unlike a slow motion scene in a movie, where as we walked towards the stairs who should also be walking towards them but Hoban himself!

Never the shrinking violets, we pounced and were able to get some quality time with the minister, discussing issues on signposting business to brokers under the Equality Act (another area where he is the decision-maker) and regulation. Mission partly accomplished already, then.

Shortly afterwards, we sat down to talk to business minister Mark Prisk MP, Kay Swinbourne MEP (the co-ordinator of the key economic committee within Europe that writes the IMD revision) and Treasury taxman David Gauke, along with other key Treasury ministers, such as Justine Greening, and MEPs including Malcolm Harbour and Vicky Ford.

Later that day, we had a final scheduled roundtable meeting with Hoban, where we were able to focus on our call for separation within the FSCS funding sub-class for intermediaries between professional insurance brokers and secondary players in the market. Hoban agreed with our point about the affect that credit brokers have had on our sector by causing an eight-fold increase over the last 12 months in brokers’ compensation fees.

Our conference visit finally came to a close, but not before Leighann saw Jeremy Paxman, her media hero and the interviewee’s nightmare. Leighann may seem very friendly in her role heading up Biba’s communications, but beware. Every time I prepare for a broadcast interview, she becomes the evil ‘Pax-ette’, grilling me with the most outrageous and aggressive questions she can think of to be sure I am best prepared.

So a successful trip, we had Mission Hoban accomplished and a happy Pax-ette!

Graeme Trudgill is Biba's technical and corporate affairs executive.