Groupama remodels business structure

Groupama Insurances has restructured its operational structure by creating three specialist business divisions for personal lines, commercial lines and healthcare.

Each division will be headed by a director with overall responsibility for divisional performance including bottom line profitability, business development and customer service.

Kevin Kiernan, who joined Groupama in October 2008 as motor underwriting director, has been appointed as personal lines director. Malcolm Smith becomes commercial lines director, moving up from the position of commercial underwriting manager following 17 years with the business whilst Alistair Sclare continues to head the Groupama Healthcare business as healthcare director. Each of the new divisional directors will report to Laurent Matras, managing director at Groupama Insurances.

Matras said: “Our continuing strong focus on profitability coupled with a desire to have a greater cutting edge in the market-place means a need to make some changes to our operational structure to enhance our effectiveness. We need a more joined up approach to the development of our business with even greater coordination and cooperation between our underwriters and business development teams. This reorganisation will help us achieve this and maintain an even greater focus in the way that we service our supporting brokers.”

The insurer said there would be no change to the organisation of the company’s claims teams which are already organised to service the three main business divisions and Phil Bird, director of claims will continue to report directly to Laurent Matras.

Matras concludes: “I am delighted Kevin, Malcolm and Alistair have accepted these new positions. They each bring a unique set of skills and experience to their specialist divisions. I believe that these changes will be very positive and will help us to adopt a very clear focus on the changing needs of partner brokers and their clients. In particular, I am keen that we develop even closer links not only between development teams, underwriters and brokers but also internally so that we continue to work across the new divisions and also get the best from shared resources such as our Actuarial, Business Proposition and E-Business teams. Greater coordination will give us the right balance between our desire for business development but without compromising the drive for long term, consistent profitability. ”