Has the Aldernmanbury Declaration had a positive effect on standards, training and providing rewarding careers for people in the industry?
The acid test for the Aldermanbury Declaration will be whether or not clients notice any improvement in service.
Introduced in 2010, the initiative was designed to encourage greater professionalism across the industry and improve its reputation.
Allianz Commercial general manager Chris Hanks says the industry has suffered from looking like the bad guys when it comes to claims.
“There’s a natural reluctance to take out insurance, and then most people don’t think about it until they have a claim. We genuinely have to investigate. But from the client perspective they’ve suffered a loss, and there we are asking difficult questions.”
Aldermanbury is part of the journey towards putting that bad perception right, which involves developing a reputation for professional standards. “A new generation of young people are going to change that reputation. Professionalism will be much better than in the past,” Hanks says. More training, an ethics policy, and the right qualifications at various levels are part of the mix.
Client-facing staff are a particular focus. Bluefin, formed through a series of five main acquisitions since 2007, is using Aldermanbury as an opportunity to differentiate.
Training director Andy Parsons says: “We have 17,000 people across 50 locations. It’s an investment in people that we see as a way of introducing consistency across the group, and of benchmarking ourselves within the industry.”
So far 225 companies have signed up to the Aldermanbury Declaration, including 150 brokers and 30 insurers.
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