Parliamentary Connections

There is almost an universal acceptance that people should do more to protect themselves and their families financially but almost no consensus on how to achieve that worthy objective. One of Incisive Media's publications, Cover magazine, has decided to do something about that and will be looking for Parliamentary and governmental support for its Promoting Protection campaign.
The starting point for this initiative was a debate at the Cover Protection Forum at the end of last year. Several hundred IFAs made it clear that they thought it was time the industry united behind a campaign to promote awareness of the need for protection and the availability of some very good products to meet that need. Many of the contributions to the debate, which I facilitated, and the vote we had at the end took the view that the industry should launch a generic advertising campaign. I happen to think this is very unlikely to happen in the modern industry but there are plenty of creative ways of achieving a similar impact as I explain in an article in the latest issue of Cover.
When the Promoting Protection campaign comes to meet the All Party Group on 27 March it will looking for political support to add impetus to its industry-wide campaign. It deserves serious backing as it is the best bet the industry has for making an impact on this issue.

The news that Lord Hunt of Kings Heath – certainly not to be confused with Lord (David) Hunt of Wirral – has returned as a minister at the Department of Health is good news for all those with an interest in promoting rehabilitation in personal injury cases.
Before he resigned in protest at Tony Blair's decision to join the war aganist Iraq, he was the only government minister to show any interest in the insurance industry's drive to embrace rehabilitation, showing a ready understanding of the need to provide better linkage between the NHS and the private sector rehabilitation services. He was prepared to meet people from the industry, trying to understand their frustrations at the number of people who should receive prompt rehabilitation but didn't because of the poor information coming from the NHS and the lack of understanding of the likely availability of private funding for rehabilitation where the accident occurred at work or in a morot accident.
Hopefully, he can pick up the threads of this debate very quickly as many of the same issues remain to be addressed three and a half years after he resigned.

Lord Sheikh, best known as the boss of Camberford Law but now to be found on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords, is beginning to find his feet in his new surroundings.
He has been chipping in quite frequently since Parliament returned, making a plea for more cleaning shifts in government buildings during normal office hours (citing his experience as a broker to several cleaning businesses) and making a forceful case for the insurance industry during a debate on economic competiveness last Thursday.
He focussed on the barriers placed in the way of UK insurers wanting to expand overseas, citing restrictive ownership rules in India, the lack of transparency on the part of Chinese regulators and the continuing problems with reinsurance collateral in the United States. This latter issue has been taken up on several occasions by the All Party Parliamentary Group, both with the Treasury and US regulators.
He seems to have caught the minister, Lord Davies of Oldham, on the hop as he was obviously well briefed to reply on every point raised in the debate except those on the insurance industry: the minister promised to write to Lord Sheikh with answers on his concerns.
It is refreshing to see that someone who has such deep roots in the insurance market wants to develop those in the political arena. It doesn't always happen. Take Sandy Leitch, former boss of Zurich in the UK. He became a Tory peer in 2004 but has hardly uttered a word on the insurance industry since.