Daily briefing: Friday - Year of the mega move

This has been a year of moves bombshells, most notably the departure of Brendan McManus from Willis and his rapid re-emergence last week at Giles. The news today that Mike Keating has left AXA personal lines is another of the big exits.

Keating has been a big beast in the AXA empire for many years. He was personal lines director under ex-chief executive Philippe Maso, seen as one of a triumvirate of key figures in the business.

Just over a year ago, Keating was touted in Insurance Times as one of the candidates for the commercial lines director’s job when Ant Middle left. Then, when Maso departed and Paul Evans took over as UK chief executive, Keating’s name was linked to the overall head of the insurer’s new personal lines business.

Justifiably, Keating must have harboured ambitions to take the role, but instead it went to former Swiftcover boss Steve Hardy. Earlier this year, Hardy said in an interview with Insurance Times that Keating had a “massive role” to play in the personal lines business.  

Ins and outs

Keating will be replaced by Nick Turner, previously director of UK partnerships. Turner has been with AXA for more than 25 years, but has a much lower public profile than that enjoyed by Keating.

For AXA personal lines, Keating is the second of Hardy’s top five appointments to have moved on since the beginning of the year – claims managing director Tony Peppard quit during the summer. The insurer’s personal lines direct business reported good results for the first half of the year, with revenues up 22%. But the results were not so transparent on the broker side of the business.

At the time of writing, barely an hour after AXA’s announcement, there were no indications about where Keating might be heading. AXA says that he has left to “pursue other interests”, but a man of Keating’s experience and wide industry contacts won’t be expected to be out of the game for long.

Slowly but surely?

Another day, another delay in the ever-protracted Solvency II process.

Eiopa (European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority) executive director Carlos Montalvo told yesterday’s ABI Solvency II conference that a European parliament vote on the directive, due to take place in the week before Christmas, has been postponed.

Given the way the parliament’s timetable works, the vote on the Omnibus II directive – a key building block for the wider Solvency II project – is therefore unlikely to take place until the end of January.

Montalvo and the European Commission’s insurance unit head Karel van Hulle, who was also speaking at the London event, made light of the delay. But later, FSA insurance director Julian Adams provided a real-world illustration of the problems that the delay is already causing.

A couple of months ago, in order to save time and unnecessary work during the 2013 run-in to Solvency II, the City watchdog came up with a plan to allow insurers to use the directive as a proxy for their ICAS (individual capital assessment) requirements.

But Adams told the conference that feedback from insurance companies suggested that it wouldn’t be quite as simple as that.

In the long run, a few months or even years won’t make too much difference, Montalvo and van Hulle had suggested earlier in the day. Of course, as John Maynard Keynes said, In the long run we are all dead too.