BOW WAVE 59

news and views on trade, insurance and risk

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Wavy Line	sam@wavyline.com
(c)2001 WavyLine.com	Issue No 59 08 Jan 01
Published free of charge to Readers
Editor: Sam Ignarski
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In this issue:

1. Welcome
2. Equitable Life
3. Meet James Wyburg
4. Readers Offer--Insider Fraud Conference
5. Elysian Report Out
6. And Finally...

1. Welcome

Back to Business with this issue using the assumption that the Yuletide break is really over for Bow Wave Readers.

2. Equitable Life

A really acute piece on the Equitable Life, the troubled mutual life insurer appeared over the holiday season in the City and Suburban column in the Spectator. a weekly magazine published in London. But the thoughts of Christopher Fildes might apply equally well to some other mutuals which are losing their way these days:

"How is it to be supposed that men will take advice,Jonathan Swift wanted to know, when they will not so much as take warning? He might well have asked the directors of the Equitable Life, but the question would not have registered. They went sleep- walking to disaster, secure in the belief that they were doing the right thing. Nothing would budge them. In the end they put their society up for sale but found no takers, at any price."

Fildes dwells on the failures of strategy of what was the UK's market leader for the higher echelon life business.

"How was it that the first life office in the world to work on actuarial principles had forgotten to insure the risk that it was running? Worse still is the harm done to iss greatest asset, which is or has been its good name. I wondered whether John Sclater, its president, could see what the fuss was about, and what help he got from his non-executive colleagues, not all of them out ot the City's top drawer. At the time I hoped for change, but here they all are, clinging to the wreckage."

And:

"As for the Equitable, I was saying a year ago that if this were a limited company, the big shareholders would long since have called the Board to account:'The Equitable itself, as an active institutional investor, would be stacking the gunpowder under the Boardroom and lighting the fuse.' A missed opportunity. Owners are unloved but ownership has its uses. It serves to concentrate the mind."

3. Meet James Wyburg

One man who has the knack of asking searching questions in a disarming way is James Wyburdg who runs a business which carries out research on the ways of life which are often covered in Bow Wave. James began commercial life in the shipping industry and then in marine insurance before leaving many years ago to run his business intelligence consultancy which has a large following.

See his site at:

http://www.wyburd.com

4. Readers Offer--Insider Fraud Conference

This Conference in London,scheduled on Tuesday, 23rd January, 2001 and set up by Peter Hastie and Co over at the Insurance Insider, has a close look at the shadow side of insurance for a day using speakers who know more than most of us about this part of the industry.

The subjects covered are

Market fraud and failures - Reinsurance, spirals, overwriting, misrepresentations and non-disclosures

Money laundering - A threat to the industry?

Brokers’ Best Practice - The changing role and responsibilities of the intermediary

Controlling the "pen" - How to manage consortias, mga’s, binders and treaties

Management Controls - Detecting loose cannon employees, managing the claims process, the threat of IT and e-commerce fraud, prudent credit control.

Bow Wave Readers who attend for this Conference are offered an 18 per cent discount on the Conference Fee by mentioning Bow Wave on their on line applications.

http://www.lii.co.uk/

5. Elysian Report Out

Time was, before the brokers, rating agencies and reinsurers got in on the act that you had to work hard to acquire an over view as to what was going on in the P&I world. One of the better reports which is written from the perspective of an insurance organisation which provides reinsurance against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune for P&I Clubs and their Members, has appeared on desks all over the industry. Its authors come from the organisation called Elysian Insurance Services.

To visit the website, which also has a fair round up of industry news go to

http://www.elysian-insurance.com/

6. And Finally...

Many readers will be familiar with the idea of emoticoms, those simple combinations of characters which carefully scrutinised, often from a sideways perspective, denote states of mind and other hard to communicate things using

Here with thanks to a stocking filler called ltlt bk of txt msgs by Gabrielle Mander is a small selection of specialised emoticons likely in time to feature in the SMS and e-mail traffic of Bow Wave Readers.

:-x My lips are sealed
:-# You are secretive
(x) He is anally retentive

:-\ I am sceptical
=-O I am surprised

d:-) Hats off to your great idea
M:-) I salute you

(O-< I suspect something fishy is going on
:-$ Put your money where your mouth is

===:[00]>:=== I have been railroaded

;-)} I am a company man

oo--oo-Bo I am in the haulage trade

(:>-< Hands Up: You are an underwriter in a soft market

/:-) I am an underwriter in the French Market

\o/ I have a surplus (praise the lord)

http://www.mombooks.com

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