In Brief

Oh dear, there goes the Ming

Towergate Strovers has developed Goldmark, a new household product for the ‘mid net worth' professionals market. Stovers, part of the Towergate Underwriting Group, created Goldmark after feedback from intermediaries showed an increase in the numbers of medium wealthy with large disposable incomes. The product automatically covers against accidental damage to both buildings and contents and has facilities to insure possessions of high value.

Make sure your trip's not rocky

Niche intermediary, Dave Tester Expatriate Insurance this week unveiled CanadaSure, a new product for migrants and people returning to the North American country. The new offering provides 90 days combined health and travel cover that migrants and returning citizens must have before they can obtain public healthcare in Canada. The product is underwritten by CNA Insurance through specialist Lloyd's brokers Crispin Spears. CanadaSure also insures people who have hazardous occupations that are not covered under their normal travel policies.

Green light for Wellington

Lloyd's has approved Wellington Underwriting Agencies' plans to increase its annual agency fee from 0.5% of capacity per annum to 0.6%. The wholly-owned subsidiary of Lloyd's insurer, Wellington Underwriting, has also been given the green light to increase its profit commission from underwriting profits from 15% to 17.5%. The increases take effect from January 1, 2000.

Hays expands

Recruitment consultancy Hays Interselection has opened an office in Leicester. It will be managed by Julie Anne Smith who has worked in the insurance industry for 12 years and with Hays for more than seven years. She will be supported by Sarah Walsh and Sharon Bordoli-Edwards who between them have more than eight years recruitment experience.

New car clinic

Dixon Motors has acquired a Ford accident repair centre in Sheffield that will specialise in light commercial vehicle repairs. The repair centre will be rebranded as a Dixon Car Clinic, bringing the total number to of Dixon's car clinics to 11 in the UK.

Going lingo

Lloyd's website is going international in a bid to give overseas brokers information in their own languages. Germany, Italy, France, Australia, South Africa and Hong Kong have all had their own sites added to www.lloyds.com Pages for Switzerland, Israel and Singapore will be added by the end of the month. Specific sites for the US and Canada have been running for some time.

Cook the book

Circuit judge Michael Cook has published a guide to the funding of litigation, entitled Cook on Costs.
Topics includes the new Costs Practice Direction, the recovery of success fees and after-the-event insurance premiums, litigation support and funding by the Legal Services Commission. The book will be updated annually.

Crawford deal

Loss adjuster Crawford has won the contract to handle losses overseas and in the UK for distribution and logistics organisation, Tibbett & Britten. Crawford's will provide outsourced adjusting and investigation services for UK transit and all overseas claims within the programme.

JLT and ACE join dotRisk

dotrisk, the fledgling virtual marketplace for cradle-to-grave commercial insurance deals, has signed up broker Jardine Lloyd Thompson and insurer ACE as sponsoring partners for the new venture. The company plans to sign up to six of the world's leading brokers and up to 12 leading insurers to the new online marketplace by the end of November.

New business

Royal & SunAlliance is creating stand-alone engineering inspection and consultancy businesses.
The new units, which previously formed part of the general engineering practice, follow a customer service review which highlighted their potential for growth as discrete “fee for service” operations.
They will be headed by newly appointed general manager Ian Curie. The Engineering Consultancy will concentrate on building and selling RSA's technical expertise. It will be headed by business manager Andy Wilkins.

Brainy addition

Karen Brain has joined St. Paul International as underwriting manager to develop a new range of legal indemnity products. Karen, formerly a director of Groupama's legal indemnity subsidiary LPI, takes responsibility for launching the new line of products in the legal, property development and financial institutions markets.

Profit slump

Policy Master's pre-tax profit has slumped by £470,000 to £29,000 due to delays in delivering its new Windows-based package for brokers, Sirius. The results follow a profits warning earlier this year because deliveries were eight weeks late. But the software house's results were boosted by £1.3m worth of orders once the Sirius product was ready.

Correction

Insurance Times last week reported that Royal & SunAlliance had been shortlisted in the broker support package of the year category for the Insurance Industry Awards. The shortlisting was for its Enterprise scheme.

Manage risks by the book

A new textbook, entitled Public Sector Risk Management, has been published, which incorporates the lates thinking in risk management. The book has been written by Peter Young, professor of risk management at the University of St Thomas, Minneapolis and Martin Fone of Munich-American Risk Partners in London.

New merger, more services

Bury-based commercial insurance and accountancy firm Thompson Jones & Co is to merge with Radcliffe-based accountants Gortons.
The new firm, Thompson Gorton Jones, will offer a range of commercial broking services to the clients of the new partnership.

Clarification

Insurance Times has recently carried advertisements from Clegg Gifford, a Lloyd's broker, stating that its ex-offenders policy was approved by Nacro, CAB and Unlock. All three organisations have made clear that they do not approve or endorse the Clegg Gifford scheme. Nacro and CAB do not endorse or approve any insurance packages.