A first win for Lando Norris in F1, an all-time cricket test match run record for Joe Root, a Premier League Darts title for a young Luke Littler, an amazing Olympic Triathlon Gold for Alex Yee and 800m Gold for Keely Hodgkinson, as well as a record-breaking 35th Tour de France stage win for Mark Cavendish…..and for our sector the FCA consultation on the scope of the Consumer Duty and a review of their rulebook, an improvement to the Ogden Personal Injury Discount Rate and the launch of the McGill fire safety reinsurance facility.
So, in many respects, a good year, but that’s not all.
Intense period for our sector
It has been an intense 12-months for the insurance broking sector too. There are many things the BIBA team work on quietly, behind the scenes, but we also have a very long, very public agenda through our Manifesto where we’ve made progress on quite a few issues.
We kicked off 2024 with a light strategic review of BIBA making a small adjustment to the sails accordingly, quickly followed by our 2024 Manifesto: Managing risk for growth and economic security, launched by a conservative Insurance Minister, but tailored to whichever party won the election. Given this careful balance, we were delighted to see in summer that inevitable Labour Government had a focus reflecting exactly our theme.
On talent we partnered with two local schools in underprivileged areas of London, something new for BIBA. We spoke to three hundred students which went incredibly well. We arranged career-based activities in the City with the help of some great partners on the project. This was then packaged up as a Talent Toolkit and rolled out to our regions.
I promised to invest in member support, and we recruited Julie Comer to beef up our regulation and compliance support for members – she has been a great addition.
Our 2024 BIBA Conference theme ‘What’s next?’ raised a lot of questions, especially as the sector is facing a lot of change politically and economically. After the general election we set about meeting as many new Ministers as possible and, despite some challenging political headlines from outside the world of insurance, our relations with the new Government have worked well: from Treasury to the Department of Transport, and on housing, regulation, flood, cyber, and business, we need this Government to succeed.
One of the political highlights for us, followed a conversation we had with the new Chancellor about the coming ‘Recommendation and Remit’ letter to the FCA. This eventually proved to be exactly what we wanted and the accompanying ‘Call for Evidence’ on growth and competitiveness led to our chunky (9,722 word) submission. There is a lot we think we can change for the better in regulation – still protecting consumers but having more proportionate regulation that can help us meet the Government’s growth agenda.
Other political highlights were meeting with two difference Insurance Ministers in the year, one blue, one red! Both meetings proved successful as we helped navigate complex issues like GAP, ‘naming and shaming’ proposals, cladded buildings insurance and the personal injury discount rate.
We held our first ever fringe at a Labour Party Conference, joined by the City Minister, Tulip Saddiq and Alastair Fraser from Marsh. It spawned and my favourite phrase of the year: ‘clearing out the garage’ (of old ICOBS now made irrelevant by the overarching Consumer Duty).
Engaging with members and others
Our Regional Tour was a real success. We met over 900 members along with our special guests, the FCA and Flood Re. I am so grateful for the engagement, much of which is now within our draft 2025 Manifesto, and well done to the FCA’s Matt, Lisa and the FCA team for coming out and crunching through the regulatory issues with members. There were a few charged moments and some great ideas!
In fact, 2024 saw the biggest BIBA engagement with members. We welcomed over 10,500 brokers (not even including those that came to The BIBA Conference) at a record 60 BIBA events including Compliance forums, Young Broker networking events, and a large range of webinars. Well done to our regional committees, commercial and membership team. We really enjoyed our trip to Newcastle, although we forgot to invite our own Geordie, Pam!
I also wanted to strengthen our Advisory Boards and technical committees. The quality of members that are involved across our 18 boards and technical committees and our 11 regional committees is first class. That’s 29 broker groups involving over 300 brokers between them and we are so much stronger for this.
We have engaged more than ever with the FCA this last 12 months, from their insurance team meeting our advisory boards and them taking a stand at our Conference for the first time in 5 years, plus speaking at a Conference session. A highlight was taking the opportunity to present at the heart of the FCA in Stratford to over 300 of the FCA Insurance Team, including policy, supervision, comms, and authorisations. Our joint aim is to have a better understanding of each other, leading to better outcomes. I am really proud of the way we now have a strong, constructive functioning relationship with the FCA, both sides are open and painfully honest and as we did this week with their Director of Authorisations, we sit around a table, roll up our sleeves and work through the issues in a co-operative way.
Insurance brokers are here to serve our customers, so we were delighted to reach record numbers with our Find Insurance Service, helping with over 418,000 enquiries and seeing increases across all areas from our Travel medical directory to our industry Flood Insurance Directory. We also aim to help members help their customers and an area of the market where brokers were short of capacity was covering electric vehicles ‘EV’s’ so I was delighted we were able to launch a new EV scheme with Novo.
We delivered new guides on the benefits of the commission model, helping to explain the claims process, and Premium Finance – clearly an issue we will be working on in 2025.
The big stage
A big moment for me personally was walking out on to the BIBA Conference stage for the first time as CEO to make my speech. Thank you to everyone for the great reception. We had our largest ever attendance welcoming over 9,600 people, some great sessions including everyone’s favourite new chair, Rich Tuplin. And of course, a new innovation, the whole BIBA team welcoming more than 2,500 visitors to a new reception event on the eve of Conference – the buzz carried through the whole three days.
Thank you to the Conference exhibitors, speakers, sponsors and attendees that made it all possible, every penny goes back into membership, so we can do the work that helps our members support their clients.
I am pleased with the new allyships we have formed for example with Mike at the MGAA and so many others as well as our long-standing relationships with ICAN and the ABI to name just a couple.
We are pleased to make such solid progress on so many issues. I know some members have faced some real challenges and we have done our best to support you. Especially those in Northern Ireland, some small niche brokers and those arranging GAP. We are conscious 2025 will be another big year for us all as we enter the next quarter century and ‘A New Era’ as trailed by our The BIBA Conference 2025 theme.
I hope the ‘New Era’ sees Lando, or even Lewis in a Ferrari win the World Championship, as well as the scope of the Consumer Duty narrowing.
Myself and the fabulous BIBA team look forward to working with you in 2025. Keep an eye out for a few new things we will be launching in the coming months. Thank you to everyone who has worked with us this last year and have a great Christmas.
Regards,
Graeme Trudgill
Chief Executive