Award
Winners Of 2008
23 November 2008, The Grand Hyatt, Hong Kong
Life Insurance Company of the Year
ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co Ltd
ICICI Prudential Life's innovative and effective products and services have made it a preferred life insurance brand in India..
ICICI Prudential Life's keen understanding of its customers and the business environment, coupled with its strong organisational framework, has enabled it to achieve and sustain its position as a dominant life, health and pensions player in the highly competitive Indian market.
The insurer has its finger on its customers' pulse with various measures such as organising an annual customer satisfaction survey, capturing customer interactions through CRM and developing models to gauge the scale and nature of expected transactions. ICICI Prudential has made every effort to ensure understand and predict customer behaviour, and transmit the right information to all concerned through MIS and dashboards.
Such knowledge has gone into developing innovative products and unique services. For example, it has pioneered health plans to cover specific diseases; these include first-of-its-kind Diabetes Care and Cancer Care products. To increase consumer convenience, the company significantly expanded its distribution network in the last financial year, and now has the highest number of touch points – more than 3,000 – in the industry.
Realising the importance of the rural base, the company has invested significantly to ramp up its infrastructure in these areas. ICICI Prudential operates a physical presence with more than 1,000 rural offices in 12 key states, staffed with dedicated advisors. It is the first life insurance company in the country to ink a public-private partnership with established government bodies such as the Indian Postal Department, which are recognised by rural consumers. It also provided call centre services, marketing literature and policy documents in regional languages, thereby building trust with its clients.
ICICI Prudential has also implemented a corporate governance framework, risk management framework and robust internal policies to strengthen its organisational structure. Despite being unlisted, the company follows a disclosure process similar to those for listed entities. It also follows the requirements of the Sarbanes Oxley Act pertaining to the adequacy of internal controls. A strong people philosophy, built on the cornerstones of a fair and meritocratic work culture and a supportive learning environment, has been another key differentiator for the company.
Through these initiatives, he company has become the preferred life insurance brand in India, amassing over seven million policies and assets of more than Rs285 billion (US$5.8 billion). Furthermore, renewal premium income increased from 24% in FY 2004 to 41% in FY 2008, and new business premium recorded a CAGR of 86% during the same period. With a total capital of Rs37.72 billion, ICICI Prudential Life is one of the most strongly capitalised Indian life insurers, underscoring its ability to be there for its customers at all times.
Sponsored by:
General Insurance Company of the Year
Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co
Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance Co (TMNF) has maintained its leading position through its continuous efforts to renew itself to meet market challenges, while at the same time, fulfilling its corporate social responsibility.
Since its formation more than a century ago, TMNF has strived for excellence and leadership in the Japanese non-life insurance market. It has maintained its current top position through continuous efforts to renew itself to meet the challenges of the market.
Its "Business Renovation Project" is one of the largest reform projects in its history, revamping areas from product design and business processes to agency systems and claims services. Following the revamp of its automobile insurance line, it embarked on changes to its fire portfolio and will soon be doing the same for other products.
TMNF has demonstrated innovation and responsiveness to customers' needs by designing products which are flexible and easily understood by both customers and agencies, and allowing clients to choose the coverage they desire after filing a claim. TMNF has also pursued straight-through processing to reduce the workload for both agencies and the company, and 100% cashless payments to cut down the risk of fraud, theft or delay in payments.
Such changes have helped TMNF to tackle the threats facing the non-life insurance industry in Japan. In FY 2007, its net profit after tax increased 17% to ¥108.7 billion, and net written premiums rose 4.5% to ¥2.2 trillion. The company remains financially robust, thanks to its sophisticated quantitative financial risk management structures to maintain an adequate amount of risk capital while investing surplus assets in more profitable projects. Regulatory compliance is also its priority, as it prepares to submit its first report to the Japanese SOX in March 2009 for better transparency in financial reporting.
TMNF is actively expanding its global footprint as well, with contributions from its international operations growing over 200% between FY2004 and FY2007. Last year, it organised its global operations by establishing Tokio Marine Americas, Tokio Marine Europe and Tokio Marine Asia. It also set up Tokio Marine Middle East in Dubai to develop the takaful business in the region. In March 2008, TMNF acquired UK-based Kiln Ltd to strengthen its global operations through the Lloyd's market.
Despite its business expansions, TMNF has not neglected its corporate social responsibility. It has participated in various projects to protect the environment, such as mangrove reforestation in Asia, and developing environmentally-conscious products and business processes. Last December, TMNF formed a "Risk Laboratory – Mangrove World" in Second Life, the first insurance company in Japan to leverage on this new technology.
With these achievements, TMNF has demonstrated that it is a worthy winner of the General Insurance Company of the Year..
Sponsored by:
Loss Adjuster of the Year
Insight Loss Adjusters
Insight Loss Adjusters' experience in handling large and complex claims, as well as its commitment to high standards of professionalism, has been recognised not only by international underwriters, but also from the judges for this award.
Insight Loss Adjusters was one of the first international loss adjusting firms on the scene following the snowstorms and earthquake in China and cyclone in Myanmar. Thanks to its close relationships around the region and support from local associates, Insight's adjusters could gain entry into Myanmar soon after the disaster. The company's growing network in China meant it was able to work on cases speedily and give maximum support to its principals despite difficult circumstances.
Apart from China, the pan-Asian loss adjusting group has also strengthened its network in the Malaysian and Philippine markets. It has been appointed to handle a few large claims, including catastrophes, and has also augmented its staff and resources in these countries.
Insight's high standards of professionalism, honesty, transparency and integrity have won trust from the international underwriting community. It was appointed Lead Adjuster by leading London market underwriters on two mega-infrastructure projects in Singapore. Insight also successfully worked to conclude the Nicoll Highway Mass Rapid Transit claim -- Southeast Asia's largest and most complex construction claim which took almost four years to complete. The settlement required a great deal of expertise and involved many different parties across the world.
Insight is the Board Secretary and the Asia Regional Office for VRS Adjusters, a leading global adjusting house based in the US, handling catastrophic losses and claims for global insurance programmes. As Lloyd's agents in Singapore and Malaysia, Insight actively partners Lloyd's Marine Intelligence Unit in providing shipping intelligence to the international maritime and insurance markets. Such crucial information is relied upon by the global community in its fight against terrorism.
Insight has also improved its processes for the benefit of its customers. Its E-Notification of claims system has made it easier for claimants to submit notifications on a 24/7 basis. This has been especially useful for mega construction projects and multinational operational insurance programmes, where early alerts of all interested parties are essential in rendering excellent service.
Such achievements have helped Insight enjoy significant growth and made last year one of the most successful in the firm's 16-year history.
Sponsored by:
Educational Service Provider of the Year
The Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance
The Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance (ANZIIF)'s commitment to growing the provision of insurance education and professional services to the Asia-Pacific region has won it the Educational Service Provider of the Year for the fifth time.
In 2007, ANZIIF performed a considerable amount of work towards boosting the educational standards of the insurance industry in Asia. It developed special programmes, established new relationships and built business ties with insurance organisations and representative bodies in China, Singapore, New Zealand, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia.
ANZIIF believes strongly in the importance of having significant representation on the ground to ensure the best knowledge and understanding of local markets. In addition to ANZIIF’s full time staff in Hong Kong and Beijing, the CEO, General Managers and more than 20 training and education staff spent more than 40 weeks working in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore in 2007.
The Institute developed an innovative staff accreditation scheme for one of the largest Chinese general insurers. This project required the assessment of existing knowledge and capability across a wide range of staff and skills and the creation of purpose-designed courseware to suit the needs of staff. This featured multimodal delivery in Mandarin, including online study materials, an independent study focus and classroom tutorials and a level of student support that had not been possible before. More than 300 participants across 15 sites in China undertook online supervised examinations in Mandarin at the close of this programme.
ANZIIF’s Diploma of General Insurance has been adopted as the benchmark industry programme by the local insurance institutes in Thailand and Indonesia. ANZIIF was also chosen as the partner and key education provider for the development of the Vietnam Insurance Institute. Staff from Australia were mobilised to deliver 48 individual training programmes developed in Vietnamese for the Vietnam insurance market, resulting in more than 1,600 enrolments over six months.
ANZIIF also significantly enhanced its online professional development and learning management tool, InSITE, last year. The upgrades mean that it not only has significantly more educational content, it is also easier to use and to track and maintain records of professional development activities. The new InSITE makes it even easier for users in disparate geographical locations to access quality learning and development materials.
More than 2,500 ANZIIF members in Asia committed to 25 hours of professional development in 2007 as part of their ANZIIF membership. Ninety-eight percent of members who made this change stated that they would renew their membership in 2008.
Sponsored by:
Innovation of the Year
The Agriculture Insurance Company of India
The Agriculture Insurance Company of India (AIC)'s introduction of a pilot Weather Based Crop Insurance Scheme (WBCIS) availed the highest level of scientific expertise and propelled it to become a leading player in the global agricultural insurance sector.
AIC has acquired in-depth knowledge of crop insurance since 1979. It administers the world's largest area yield crop insurance programme, the National Agricultural Insurance Scheme, which covers about 20 millions farmers.
Although area yield insurance is comprehensive, it suffers from a few shortcomings, such as delayed settlement of claims, the lack of reliable historical data and the huge cost of crop cutting experiments. Since about 90% of claims under the area yield index programme are attributed to vagaries of weather, AIC asked whether weather index insurance could be introduced instead. This resulted in four years of work, leading to the introduction of WBCIS as a pilot during 2007-08.
The new product was made available in about 200 locations for about 20 different crops. It was not only first of its kind, but used the highest level of scientific and technical inputs available anywhere in the world. The product was designed using cleaning and simulation of historical weather data, a crop growth simulation model to capture yield-weather relationship and a dense network of automatic weather stations to measure current weather.
Service was made highly flexible under WBCIS. While the product is available only to the cultivators growing the crop, opportunities were equally extended to all growers – borrowing farmers, non-borrowing farmers, owner cultivators, tenant farmers and share-croppers. The product was marketed through the network of rural financial institutions so as to reach out to the maximum number of cultivators, as well as through intermediaries and micro-insurance agents.
In the first year of the pilot, WBCIS insured 671,000 farmers growing crops on over a million hectares. The weather insurance portfolio of AIC that year was almost 10 times the combined share of other insurers. With WBCIS, AIC became the leader of not just the agricultural sector in India, but across the world.
WBCIS was a success, mainly because claims could be paid within 45 days from the end of the contract. This was a huge improvement from the six to nine months for area yield insurance. Other gains were product transparency and a larger scope in terms of new crops and areas.
The product also received excellent response from the international reinsurance, with three reinsurers participating on ‘quota share’ basis, taking 50% of the portfolio. Further improvements to the product will be made in the year ahead.
Sponsored by:
Service Provider
of the Year
John Foord (Asia) Pte Ltd
With 18 years of experience operating in the region, John Foord (Asia) stands out for its professionalism, speed and effectiveness in assessing risks and handling valuations.
John Foord (Asia), a professional advisor to international clients and insurers on what to value their assets at, serves the complete spectrum of the insurance industry, from brokers and loss adjusters to insurers and reinsurers. This, together with its long experience in Asia, has helped it to acquire superior in-depth knowledge of insurance valuations.
The company invests in techniques to improve customer and market insight, and to use its acquired knowledge to heighten its client offerings. It has a 96% on-time delivery of final valuation reports, and provides Project Gantt charts to clients so that all parties are aware of the project milestones. Leaving nothing incomplete or missing, it ensures that every expectation of the contract has been satisfactorily delivered upon.
Not merely focussing on the deliverables, John Foord has cultivated trust and respect by working openly, allowing clients to ask questions and see how the valuation programmes are developing. At the same time, it prices evenly by service, not by the client, to ensure consistent fees and to avoid arbitrary fluctuations. Eighty-five percent of its yearly business is gained through existing relationships and the remaining growth comes from new business. In 2007, it recorded more than 140% growth in sales.
Each of its senior team members has over 25 years of experience in their specialised profession, and 50% are Fellows of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors – the highest accolade of the valuation profession – which reflects the high level of professionalism at John Foord.
John Foord has demonstrated its ability to see past difficult issues and look at the bigger picture, and still deliver on-time valuation reports in a professional and expert manner. This has earned it respect, an ever-increasing international client base and the Service Provider of the Year award.
Sponsored by:
Risk Manager of the Year
Tom Cohen, Swire Pacific Ltd
Mr Tom Cohen's active promotion of risk management as a discipline in Swire Pacific, and his focus on developing close relationships with the company's key insurers, has helped him to clinch this coveted award.
Group Risk Manager Tom Cohen plays a leading role in promoting and monitoring risk management across Swire Pacific -- one of the leading companies in Hong Kong. He assists in tailoring risk-management and risk-transfer solutions for each of the five operating divisions. His recent achievements include the transition from construction to operational insurance for a million-dollar retail and hotel development in Beijing, a complex aviation liability renewal and an employee compensation insurance claims root cause analyses.
In 2007 and 2008, Mr Cohen joined the human resource risk management working group, enhancing the coverage of the group life programme and arranging D&O insurance training for the company secretary's department. After consolidating Swire's Employee Benefits (EB) insurance programmes in Hong Kong and setting up an international pool for EB insurance, his constructive dialogue with the provider, AXA China, resulted in tailored wordings and the company's multi-year programme. He also led a project to consolidate the EB programme in China, where the Group's operations are predominantly based.
When dealing with insurers, Mr Cohen focuses on ensuring maximum group leverage on pricing and coverage terms. However, he also aims to develop close relationships with key insurers, an approach which has resulted in cross-class pricing and the ability to escalate issues to senior management.
Mr Cohen has played an active role in promoting risk management as a philosophy and business discipline. This year, he was closely involved in redesigning the group's risk governance structure. This led to the establishment of a board level risk committee and reorganisation of the group's specialist risk committees to ensure formal oversight of the full risk spectrum. He is also the Chairman of the new Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) committee, which is now developing an ERM process to be applied across the group from next year.
Demonstrating his innovative edge, Mr Cohen incorporated claims data reviews in control surveys to help determine the root causes for high frequency losses. He also helped to develop an enhanced premium allocation model which includes weighting for claims, thus enhancing divisional loss prevention activity.
For his contributions to Swire Group's risk management process, Mr Cohen is a worthy winner of the Risk Manager of the Year award.
Sponsored by:
Broker of the Year
Marsh Asia
Winning this title for the third time is Marsh, who impressed judges with its commitment to client service and a series of industry firsts.
Marsh demonstrated its strong commitment to the Asian market in several ways. It launched the region's first local benchmarking capability as part of its global benchmarking services. In Japan and Korea, Marsh now offers local benchmarking data by industry on limits of liability, deductibles and premiums.
Last year, Marsh expanded its global Forensic Accounting and Claims Services (FACS) into Asia to support companies with complex claims. It also streamlined its regional placement approach, establishing a dedicated team and structured servicing phases.
Marsh's Enterprise Risk Practice helped clients to develop a formal Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) framework, in response to a ruling from the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) that insurance companies must develop and implement such guidelines. Earlier this year, the CIRC ranked Marsh as the number one international broker in China based on annual invoiced revenue.
Marsh developed a free risk assessment tool, Risk Explorer, for Asia's small to medium-sized enterprises. It also developed the region's first individual professional liability protection schemes for fitness professionals and swimming coaches in Singapore, and plans to roll these out throughout the region.
The firm was also the first to establish a specialist Environmental Risk practice in Asia. Marsh worked with local insurers in Asia on locally-admitted environmental risk policy wordings for US clients to buy where non-admitted insurance is prohibited, helped to bring certainty to these companies seeking to do business in the region.
To retain business in soft market conditions, Marsh launched a dedicated team for client retention and development to improve its 'win-rate', as well as a dedicated client retention programme. Its business retention rates remained healthy and new business growth has been at double-digit rates, year-on-year. In Asia last year, new business was 27% of client service revenue and in the first quarter of 2008, new business grew more than 50% year-on-year.
Marsh provided outstanding support to clients during losses. When a client in Thailand suffered a major fire loss in 2007, one of its largest claims in 20 years, Marsh worked tirelessly for a year managing the claims process. In China, an aluminium cold-rolling operation suffered a significant loss initially valued at US$3 million. Following an FACS policy review, detailed analysis and client advocacy, Marsh finalised a claim settlement 286% above the client's expectation and 31.4% above the loss adjuster and insurer's offer to settle.
Marsh continued its industry-leading commitment to professional standards, helping to ensure it met local market conditions, delivered a professional level of service and reduced the risk of errors.
Sponsored by:
Reinsurance
Broker of the Year
Guy Carpenter Asia Pacific
Guy Carpenter & Company has provided unparalleled service to clients in the Asia Pacific for over a century, recognising and meeting the demands for professional services and analytical resources.
As the first reinsurance broker to establish its regional headquarters in Asia Pacific, Guy Carpenter’s roots run deep. Its localised platform and the significant investments it has made in developing analytical resources in the region have allowed it to understand and share knowledge about the different characteristics of each territory in the Asia Pacific.
In 2007-8, Guy Carpenter offered groundbreaking solutions to enhance portfolio management and help clients better understand and manage their exposures. One of these was i-aXs®, its award-winning data management platform, introduced to clients in Australia, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and China in the past year. The platform allows insurers to convert their data quickly into clear and concise information, resulting in faster and better-informed decision-making.
Guy Carpenter is at the forefront of the industry in implementing advanced research and providing modelling expertise. In June this year, it opened the Guy Carpenter Asia Pacific Climate Impact Centre, which aims to serve as the leading hub for climate research, enhance the understanding of climate-related perils in the region and improve the ability to predict their rate of occurrence. In early 2008, the company released a pioneering Thailand flood model to help clients manage flood exposures.
In addition, Guy Carpenter tripled the number of regional professionals in its Instrat® unit, which uses quantitative skills and modelling tools to optimise reinsurance solutions for its clients.
In 2007, Guy Carpenter’s Asia Pacific book of business grew by 10% despite intense competition, and its Greater China and Australia businesses increased by more than 20%. It remains the market leader in China, Korea, Taiwan and Malaysia. It maintained a 95% retention rate in the region and retained its position as lead broker for the Taiwan Residential Earthquake Insurance Fund through 2009. It was also appointed by the Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation as the sole broker of record for its terrorism pool scheme.
As a result of its exceptional client servicing, Guy Carpenter has established strong and enduring business relationships with insurers in the region. Last year, the firm celebrated 100-year anniversaries with two clients in Japan.
Such achievements have made Guy Carpenter a deserving winner of the Reinsurance Broker of the Year award.
Sponsored by:
General Reinsurer of the Year
Swiss Re
Swiss Re takes the honour for its customer focus, innovation in the area of parametric covers and claims, and contribution towards India's medical insurance market.
With 11 offices across the region, Swiss Re has continued to understand and stay close to client and market needs. Late last year, it launched a web-based service quality study among 1,000 clients and brokers in Asia, achieving a high average response rate of 55%. The resulting "Net Promoter Score" is a new client service benchmark tracked annually to monitor service improvements.
To address the challenges of products, pricing and underwriting facing the Indian medical insurance market, Swiss Re worked with the regulator and P&C companies to design long-term covers, which are better aligned to customer needs. In 2007, Swiss Re answered the needs of Japanese corporates by bringing simple and unambiguous products that use parametric triggers to cover financial losses.
The reinsurer offers one of the most client-centric claims processes in Asia. It streamlined its teams and processes by case size and complexity, to ensure faster responses on all claims. In 2008, it transformed more than three entities into one global, centralised process and support system which tracks claims documents throughout their "lifespan" within Swiss Re.
Swiss Re has also used technology to enhance employee engagement. Early this year, it harnessed the Internet to engage its 10,000 employees around the world in a three-day, online "ideas sharing" marathon. Close to 75% of staff provided solutions and seized the opportunity to partake in building the company's future. The best ideas are already being implemented.
As a demonstration of its industry leadership, Swiss Re partnered with Vietnam's VinaRe, enabling the firm to transfer best practice and technical skills to advance the market. Swiss Re also continued holding regular dialogue with opinion leaders and regulators in other countries. In 2007, for example, the Swiss Re Centre for Global Dialogue in Rueschlikon, Switzerland hosted a workshop with the China Insurance Regulatory Commission on supporting market development and social benefits for the world's second-largest economy.
Committed to professional development, Swiss Re Academy Asia trained more than 1,000 people last year, on topics ranging from introduction to re/insurance to corporate finance and technical subjects such as marine, engineering and property risk management.
Going beyond the business, Swiss Re has spread the word on earthquake safety among hospitals in India, sponsored an art exhibition by the intellectually disabled in Japan, and helped to build and equip a pre-school cum emergency shelter in the Philippines.
Life Reinsurer of the Year
RGA
Despite being a recent entrant in Asia, RGA has made significant contributions to helping the regional life insurance industry grow and innovate.
RGA Asia Pacific's revenue reached US$908.6 million in 2007, an increase of 28% over 2006, with pre-tax net income of U$60.1 million. This development attests to its market-leading approach to developing reinsurance business relationships.
RGA has helped grow its customers' business by developing and facilitating tailored workshops focusing on client acquisition and retention. In Australia, it has contributed to the successful retention and growth of 11 major industry funds totalling over $250 million in gross premium, with projected growth of 50%-60% over their next contract periods.
With the use of CRM and the RGA Focus quarterly client relationship scorecards, the company has stayed close to its clients. In Japan, it provides a technical product development service for clients, and in Hong Kong, it offers training to clients in all Southeast Asian markets. RGA also regularly conducts full client process reviews to help clients become more efficient and benchmark their internal processes against local and global best practices.
RGA has been recognised for its product innovation and adaptability to industry changes. For example, it designed a critical illness product with its Malaysian joint venture partner, MLRE, and helped one of its clients launch a new comprehensive critical illness plan for cancer in Hong Kong. It also partnered with Allianz Australia to help deliver a new Internet-based, direct-to-consumer business model. The fully underwritten product is the first of its kind Down Under and helps tackle the underinsurance issue.
Market knowledge and thought leadership is core to RGA's value proposition. Its web-based Global Underwriting Manual provides underwriters with access to market-leading information, research and tools to make assessments on cases. It was also instrumental in establishing the Underwriting Association of Japan. In addition, RGA provides annual underwriting and actuarial seminars for clients in Japan, in addition to bi-monthly seminars.
RGA has made significant contributions in the field of bancassurance. By conducting detailed research, it has helped several clients to re-address their sales processes, products and services in bancassurance. Results from qualitative research conducted by RGA Australia on the sale of bancassurance were made available throughout the industry. In 2007, RGA arranged global benchmarking study trips for key clients to research best practices in bancassurance, focusing on product and distribution trends.
RGA's commitment to helping the life insurance in Asia innovate and grow resulted in its recognition as the leading life reinsurer by NMG Financial Services Consulting in 2007.
Sponsored by:
Corporate Social Responsibility Award
Bangkok Insurance Public Company Ltd
Bangkok Insurance's vision and continued efforts in helping communities become self-sustaining has earned it the corporate social responsibility (CSR) accolade.
Bangkok Insurance Public Company adheres strongly to management based on good corporate governance and responsibility to society. At the heart of its CSR policy is to help communities achieve long-term self-help. The company has worked towards this by engaging in activities that promote education among the young, conserve the environment and preserve the national heritage.
Bangkok Insurance made various contributions towards raising education levels. These included a total of 60 million baht (US$1.7 million) since 2007 to the Chai Pattana Foundation to construct school buildings, and 800,000 baht to the "Graduates Go Home" project, under which undergraduate students are granted scholarships with the hope that they will apply the knowledge gained in university to develop their hometowns.
Other than monetary donations, more than 100 employees came together to help Pathomvittayakarn School repair school buildings and help improve their landscaping after it was affected by floods. The company also constructed lavatories and nurseries in Ban Saithong School in northern Thailand to improve hygiene and educational standards for poor students.
As part of ongoing efforts to promote heritage and culture, Bangkok Insurance supported the development of an archaeological site in northern Thailand by contributing 4 million baht towards the construction of a museum to display excavated artefacts. It has also encouraged the development of the local Wiang Bua pottery work and groomed the village as a eco-tourism destination.
Elsewhere, Bangkok Insurance contributed 1.2 million baht to help develop an archaeological learning site in central Thailand. It is hoped that the development of this site as a tourist attraction will help the local community be more self-reliant.
For more than 20 years, Bangkok Insurance has supported efforts to combat global warming. This year, it organised the "Unplug" Bangkok Insurance Help Stop Global Warming project, which promotes the importance of saving energy.
Bangkok Insurance is the only non-life insurance company in Thailand to provide a free mobile medical service, in conjunction with Bumrungrad Hospital, to promote public hygiene and sanitation. This year, the service helped to treat the poor and underprivileged in the remote areas of the northeast. Additionally, in 2007, more than 40 employees participated in four mobile medical programmes to render a rehabilitation service to more than 6,000 people with disabilities, helping them to lead normal lives.
Between April 2007 and March 2008, the company spent a total of 44.6 million baht on CSR activities. The company is determined to continue promoting such activities that will benefit society, while stressing the importance of sustainable and measurable development.
Sponsored by:
Personality of the Year
Joan Fitzpatrick, Chief Executive officer. ANZIIF
As the face and leader of the Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance (ANZIIF), Ms Joan Fitzpatrick’s passion and determination in raising professional standards has made her a highly regarded personality in the Asian insurance industry.
Ms Joan Fitzpatrick’s tenure as CEO of ANZIIF has been marked by numerous innovations and achievements. Notable among these are her highly successful efforts to engage ANZIIF more effectively and productively with the insurance communities of the east Asian region.
In doing so, she has relentlessly pursued her goal of raising professional standards, capabilities and reputation of the industry throughout the region. She has done so through ongoing personal advocacy at regional conferences, almost every conversation with industry representatives, numerous papers and articles in the regional industry media, and not least of all, by leading, directing and applying the educational and other resources of ANZIIF.
Ms Fitzpatrick has led the development and establishment of professional competencies, capabilities and standards through ANZIIF’s curricula and learning materials. She has helped to make professional education more accessible and relevant throughout the region by producing learning materials in local languages and applying computer and Internet technologies to deliver online learning, professional development and assessment.
Her passion has also been evidenced by ANZIIF’s leadership and engagement in the region in the last few years. These include the establishment of the Institute as a preferred provider of certified and customised management and para-professional education for several of China’s largest general insurers, cooperation with Vietnam’s Ministry of Finance to establish the Vietnam Insurance Institute, and adoption of ANZIIF’s Diploma in General Insurance as a core programme in Thailand and Indonesia.
Ms Fitzpatrick’s determination to ensure that ANZIIF and its products and services remain relevant in a constantly-changing world is evident in the constant stream of innovations she has inspired. These include mandating continuing professional development as a requisite for continuing professional membership of ANZIIF, and producing a range of educational resources to instil the understanding of insurance among high school students and promote insurance as an attractive career option.
Through her many contributions, Ms Fitzpatrick has made her mark on the regional insurance industry and is a worthy winner of this year’s Personality of the Year.
Sponsored by:
Cocktail Sponsor
