An insurance professional since 1979, I joined the ERA Insurance Procurement Services team in 2024 to support Paul in helping businesses to get the most out of their insurance protections in terms of the broadest coverage at the best price.
My experience has included many years specialising in resolving the insurance issues that come to prominence in the peculiar circumstances arising during the buying and selling of companies. I have acted as a trusted advisor to all kinds of businesses undergoing mergers and acquisitions, assisting them and their investors to maintain and improve their protections against both current and past liabilities, whilst simultaneously minimising costs to enhance net earnings for the longer term.
Some of my more unusual activities have included:
→ Arranging tailor-made policies to provide protection against unresolved past liabilities, also known as ‘After The Event’ (ATE) coverage. This is particularly useful if a merger target company has incurred a significant uninsured loss in the past and there is uncertainty about the final cost of settlement;
→ Developing and marketing specific innovative insurance products to support the launch of new business models, such as the insurance element to underpin a nationwide patient membership scheme for dental practices that has grown from zero to encompass several million members;
→ Re-engineering frustratingly inefficient liability insurance programmes to provide coverage in ways that make best use of the policyholder’s financial strength, coupled with improvements in the company’s internal and external risk management processes. This facilitates much greater control of and involvement in the claim processes by senior management, helping them to quickly identify developing trends and anomalies in the claims landscape and enabling them to adjust risk management procedures accordingly. This approach swiftly delivered significant reductions in the overall costs of claims and the bottom line impacts of both premiums and loss deductibles.
