AILA President’s message
Susan Vidler

Award winners excel in state presentations

Congratulations to the winners of the Ron Shorter Memorial Awards for public speaking.

The finals of the Ron Shorter Memorial Public Speaking Awards were held in Victoria on 19 July, NSW on 26 July and Queensland on 4 August.

All finalists spoke with confidence on topics that were interesting, well researched and professionally delivered. Each demonstrated the skills and techniques acquired through the coaching provided by Polaris.

Congratulations to the winners in each state:

Victoria - Erica Lawson, from Logie-Smith Lanyon Lawyers. Topic: Digital transformation and the dawn of social sharing on the insurance industry

NSW - Natalie Donnan, from McInnes Wilson Lawyers. Topic: Unpacking the fairly untested waters of the rise of the drone and the insurance implications that may flow

Qld - Tenniele Horton, from QBE. Topic: The blurring lines between the roles of insurers, brokers and other advisers.

Each state winner receives a trip to the National Conference in Adelaide in October where they will have the opportunity to showcase their skills during the conference program.

I encourage everyone attending the National Conference to show their support for these exceptional young professionals by attending those sessions.

National Conference Adelaide

Registrations are now open for the 2016 National Conference at the Adelaide Oval on 14–16 October.

This year’s theme is “Game Changers” and the organising committee has arranged a program with high-quality speakers from Australia and overseas. To register, please visit www.aila.com.au.

Regional conference Singapore

AILA; the Singapore AIDA regional chapter, ILAS; and the US-based Federation of Defence and Corporate Council are combining their efforts in 2017 to present a regional conference in Singapore on 26-29 September.

It will coincide with a meeting of the AIDA Presidential Council. Mark your diaries now. More information will be available soon. See AIDA Presidential Council representative Chris Rodd’s column in this issue for more details.

East coast low storms

Insured losses from the east coast low that pounded four states in June had reached $337 million by the end of July.

Insurance Council of Australia figures showed insurers had received more than 43,000 claims across Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Tasmania and the event was declared a catastrophe.

More storms hit later in June, making it a costly month for underwriters.

APRA proposes changes to GI stats

APRA has released a discussion paper on proposed changes to its general insurance (GI) statistical publications.

The regulator proposes to publish more GI statistics, including data determined non-confidential. It aims to improve the relevance of APRA’s statistics to users and address feedback in stakeholder surveys and formal and informal consultations.

In particular, APRA plans to:
• publish more industry-level statistics each quarter
• modernise segmentation of industry-level statistics
• publish more institution-level statistics each quarter and annually, and
• publish new industry-level claims development statistics by class of business.

Click here to read more.

APRA has also released a discussion paper on the role of appointed actuaries. Click here to read more.

KPMG: Insurers are not leading innovation

A new global report from KPMG makes interesting reading.

Empowered for the future: Insurance reinvented suggests insurers have invested significant time and money to transform their organisations over the years, but few have much to show for their efforts.

KPMG surveyed 70 industry executives around the world to find insurers are well aware of the hurdles they face as they set out to transform their operations but many admit they struggle to extract full value from the initiatives and lack some key capabilities needed to drive change on the scale required.