iCAN signs four new sponsors in 2020 ‘Year of Action’

The Insurance Cultural Awareness Network (iCAN) has announced its ‘Year of Action’ for 2020 as it welcomes four new sponsors.

These include Convex, Miller Insurance Services, Liberty and its headline sponsor – BLM Law.

It is now 900 members strong, with continued support of sponsors which includes Allianz Global Corporate and Specialty, Chubb, Inclusion@Lloyd’s, Premfina and Zurich.

iCAN will hold exclusive member events to access industry senior executive and events outside London, but this is dependent on the situation with Covid-19.

Kishan Mangat, co-chair and senior associate at DWF, said: “Our network is nothing without our members.

”Their support has helped us achieve what we have last year and this year, and so it is about giving back to our members and turning our own rhetoric into action.

”After our annual survey, we saw clear demand from our members to expand our events outside London.

“Our members asked, we listened: iCAN will be hosting its very first event outside of London this year, to better serve our growing membership across the UK. We feel it is our responsibility as a network to have our members’ voices heard and that is exactly what we intend to do as a part of our ‘Year of Action’.”

It will also continue to actively advise and guide organisations on their diversity and inclusion initiatives.

This include how to build a successful internal employee network, as well as how to start mentoring events and programmes.

It will also continue to work closely with Aston Charles Recruitment to promote opportunities for BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) talent across the industry.

Actionable initiative

Last year iCAN’s goal was to raise awareness, create noise and have a larger impact in the insurance industry. It’s last event ‘RhetoricIn2Action’ with a goal for turning impact and rhetoric into actionable initiatives that will better promote diversity and inclusions across the UK and support its members. It said that this was a launchpad to this year’s theme.

In 2019 iCAN launched its first industry-wide, self-service mentoring initiative called “INspire,” in collaboration with PwC UK and the Independent Women in Insurance Network (iWIN) for BAME, multicultural and international colleagues across the insurance industry.

INspire offers cross-industry access to senior executive mentors and after being live just over two months, the initiative has now signed up 50 mentors this includes senior leaders at Zurich, BLM Law and Markel with 50 mentees from across the industry.

Ajay Mistry, iCAN co-chair and partnerships director at Brokerbility, said: “We promised to create impact and we believe that over the course of last year, we have done so.

”Now, it’s about taking that awareness to action wider change and INspire is one of the ways which we intend to do that as part of our year of action.

“Along with INspire, iCAN will also be creating other opportunities for members, such as breakfast and lunch sessions to give exclusive access to some of the industry’s top senior executives.”