Aldermanbury Declaration
Ian Wainwright
BROKER SALES DIRECTOR ECCLESIASTICAL INSURANCE
Raising the bar in insurance
Ecclesiastical’s Ian Wainwright calls for an end to the “knowledge is power” reticence that threatens the achievement of the goals of the Aldermanbury Declaration
P
rofessionalism within the insurance industry: it’s been a hot topic for some years now. The debates around whether insurance is - or isn’t - a profession, and how we can make the voices of our professionals count have been raging on and off for as long as I can recall - and, trust me, that’s quite a while - so it’s clearly nothing new. However, the heat generated by this debate has been cranked up by several degrees by last year’s Aldermanbury Declaration. Since its launch, the industry has finally reached a point at which mere words are no longer enough and the time has come for some strong, decisive action.
The CII’s Aldermanbury
Declaration doesn’t contain much in the way of revolutionary content. It’s a practical, common sense framework for professional standards within our industry. Neither does it require its signatories to drastically alter their practices. It merely asks our industry to take stock for a moment and commit to ensuring we all work to similar standards of practice, arming our people with the same essential professional skills and putting our customers at the heart of everything we do.
By achieving a certain level of professional standardisation across the board, we have a greater chance of enhancing the reputation of our industry,
keeping our customers happy and - ultimately - growing our businesses.
So how do we achieve the declaration’s objectives and where to start? The CII is certainly a good place to begin. It provides excellent general training for insurance
professionals and ensures we all have the same fundamental knowledge of the industry when we launch our careers. However, there is a problem. Many of today’s insurers and brokers operate in specialist areas. They therefore need their staff to have specialist knowledge and skills, which aren’t always part of the training offered by the CII or any other training provider. This has led to
an increasing number of insurers developing their own training programmes to meet these highly bespoke needs.
At Ecclesiastical, for example, the niches the company operates in have necessitated the development of our own specialist sales, underwriting, claims and survey academies as the training was not available elsewhere.
Such internal development programmes have proved extremely successful and are certainly one way forward to ensuring professional standards across an entire business. However, what they lack is the ability to eliminate the knowledge gap across the industry as a whole.
16 insurancepeople MARCH 2011
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