Blog article from www.AllanManning.com – Dr Allan Manning; Managing Director LMI Group

 

"Last night I was extremely pleased to witness the great response that The Mansfield Awards received from all those who attended.

The night started with a video of an insured who went through a major fire and was so appreciative of the support he received from the insurance industry to allow him to put his “baby” and life back together.

This was followed by the evening’s MC, Martin McAvenna who really nailed the reason behind the awards which were to recognise the often unsung heroes of the insurance industry, the claims teams, and to start pushing the need to move the focus away from the price of insurance to quality products backed by good claims service.

Mark Doepel, partner at Sparke Helmore and Chairman of Lloyd’s Australia kept up the very high standard with an excellent presentation on Lord Mansfield and why it is so fitting that the awards were named after the Chief Justice who enshrined Good Faith as an underlying principle in insurance back in 1766.

The first awards were presented by Mr Vivek Bhatia who was representing the first of our two major sponsors, iCare, who announced the winner of the SME category, with the winner Chubb Insurance and the Specialty category with NTI taking the award.

Martin then introduced a short video on the Amal Mulia Orphanage where all funds raised from the evening will be donated to. Both insurance news and LMI Group donated all their time to this important cause and therefore all monies by way of sponsorship and ticket sales over and above the cost of physically running the event will go to this very worthwhile charity.

Our second sponsor for the event was Steadfast, who was represented by Samantha Hollman to present the awards for Corporate Property & Casualty with the winner Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance and Personal Lines category, Allianz Australia Limited.

I then had the opportunity to speak and I stressed the need to continue to invest in our claims teams and their service providers, such as loss adjusters, investigators and the like, and that the evaluation of these services purely on price is equally as silly as buying insurance on price alone. One of the big issues facing the industry is training and recruitment and the government with their changes to the 457 Visa is putting enormous stress on the loss adjusting fraternity in particular, with 34 adjusters in Australia operating on a 457 visa with another 14 in negotiations.

But, the night was more about the positives and I congratulated all winners and finalists, all of whom deserve to be on the finals list, before Terry thanked everyone involved in putting it together, in particular, Madison Seymour from Insurance News, Ashleigh White and Andrew Pitts from LMI Group, our MC, Martin McAvenna and keynote speaker, Mark Doepel.

Then the final pleasing duty was to announce the overall winner of The Gold Mansfield Award for the best claims team in Australia, as Chubb Insurance Australia. Just jumping above finalists Insurance Australia Limited and Vero.

Speaking to people after the event, it is clear that they were so pleased to see so many senior executives from the industry to attend and support their part of the insurance industry and their strong support for this to become an annual calendar event which both Insurance News and LMI Group are committed to.

Today, ClaimsComparison will be updated to reflect all the survey results in 20 classes of insurance, to learn more please visit: www.claimscomparison.com"

 

The categories and their nominees and winners (highlighted gold) were:

Personal Lines

Allianz

Ansvar

Chubb

Defence Service Homes

 

Specialty

GT Global

NTI

Terri Scheer

 

SME

Ansvar

Capricorn Mutual

Chubb

Insurance Australia Limited via their brands NRMA, RACQ, RACV, SGIC

 

Corporate

Berkshire Hathaway Specialty Insurance

FM Global

TIO/Allianz

Vero

 

The Gold Mansfield

Chubb

Insurance Australia Limited

Vero