Insurance Times Advent Calendar: John Read

1. What was your insurance industry highlight of 2024?

There have been lots of highlights for me this year due to it being the 25th anniversary year for WTW Networks – from our incredible June 2024 Forum event in Evian, France, to our UK conference in the WTW auditorium in London’s Lime Street last month (November 2024).

These events always remind me of how lucky I am to work with fantastic members and partner insurers – and how lucky we all are to work in such a vital and vibrant industry.

An annual highlight has to be seeing senior people in our industry, appreciating that they are very fortunate, being generous at charity events towards those who are less fortunate than ourselves. So, for my 2024 highlight, I will pick out the golf day organised by consultant Andrew Scott in September 2024.

Around 20 teams from across the insurance industry had a great day and the charity auction was hugely successful, raising a total of over £30,000 for Queen Elizabeth’s Foundation for Disabled People.

2. What is your Christmas message for your insurance colleagues?

Appreciate what we do and be proud of it.

We undersell ourselves when it comes to speaking about our industry and the value we deliver to individuals, companies and the overall economy. This has a knock-on effect when it comes to attracting new people into our industry.

Very few school leavers and graduates think of insurance as their preferred career option, which is crazy when you think about the great career opportunities that are available within this industry, which is there for its customers when they need it most and which underpins our economy.

So, let’s find a way in 2025 of doing our industry justice and promoting ourselves to attract more school leavers, graduates and talented people from other industries.

3. What do you hope to find under the industry’s Christmas tree for 2025?

Sorry to be greedy, but two things spring to mind that I’d like to find under the industry’s Christmas tree for 2025.

The first is recognition for the privately owned independent broker as it seems that the majority of insurance intermediary spokespeople come from consolidators and global brokers. WTW Networks and Insurance Times will be working together on this as a number of our network members would undoubtedly provide valuable insights.

Secondly, a continuation of the trend to have insurer and broker staff work from offices more of the time. This will enable us all to provide a better service and more consistency to clients, but also ensure that the next generation of insurance talent is appropriately trained – passive learning from the office environment has historically shaped our careers.