R&SA chief says underwriting discipline starts at the top
Royal & SunAlliance (R&SA) chief executive Duncan Boyle has called on the insurance industry's major players to show their support for Insurance Times' Underwriting Discipline campaign.
The call came as the insurer joined Norwich Union in pledging its support for the campaign to promote best practice in underwriting.
Boyle told Insurance Times it was the responsibility of industry leaders to establish strong underwriting discipline practices.
"It starts at the top," Boyle said. "Then it comes down to the training and capability of the underwriters."
Sound training ethics, he said, was the key.
He also said there must be a closer relationships between chief executives and their underwriting staff. "In some companies," Boyle said, "there is a raft of difference between what the chief executives are doing and what the underwriters are doing on the ground. That is why this campaign is welcome."
He continued: "It is good to see Insurance Times continuing to bang the drum. It is very different now compared to the end of 1990s, when no one talked about underwriting discipline.
"The majority of chief executives now see underwriting discipline as the starting point of creating profitability."
' Do you agree with what Duncan Boyle is saying? Have you experienced reckless underwriting?
Have your say: email michael.faulkner@instimes.co.uk
Technical talent shortage
A third of brokers believe that the biggest talent shortage in the industry is in technical training followed by personal, IT and management skills, research from Biba has found.
But despite these concerns, two out of five brokers do not have a training plan in place and a third do not arrange any training. This comes despite the impact of FSA regulation.
Just over half have a training budget and two-thirds of those have a budget of less than £10,000.
