INMAG_DEC2010_FINAL:page layouts
#18
2/12/10
10:01 AM
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Heinrich Eder
#20
Managing Director Munich Re Australia The two major reinsurers have real power in the Australian insurance industry and also the wider community. If the reinsurers raise their rates, they’ll bring to an end a prolonged hard market, with the additional costs rapidly being passed on by the insurers to their customers – adding just a little more pressure to inflation and rising costs. Heinrich Eder is a career-long Munich Re man who is recognised at all levels of the industry and at many levels of government. A compelling speaker on difficult subjects like climate change – where Munich Re has long been an opinion-leader – his company’s influence on a reinsurance-reliant Australian industry is significant. And alternatively, he’s a good advocate for Australia with the numbers men back in Germany.
Vivek Bhatia
#19
Chief Executive Lumley Insurance
Lach McKeough Chief Executive Austbrokers By Lach McKeough’s measure, the past year has been a relatively quiet one for Austbrokers. There’s a drought in good brokerages for sale at present – he expects 2011 to be better – while rates are soft, investment earnings are lower and organic growth is difficult. Through it all Austbrokers continues on its winning way, ending the last financial year with a 14.4% increase in net profit over 2009. McKeough has been with Austbrokers from its unlikely beginnings in 1985 as an offshoot of an insurance company, taking it through its public listing five years ago and always keeping the profit meter ticking over. Today the company is also a significant operator of underwriting agencies – their combined annual premium income is $75 million – and working through the Austbrokers/IBNA joint venture provides Austbrokers with 120 brokers and a considerable market edge. He has around $20 million sitting in the bank for acquisitions, so expect McKeough to be shopping around as the economy perks up in 2011. 28
insuranceNEWS
December 2010/January 2011
As a young gun whose company sits at the edge of the top five insurers, this Indianborn technocrat with the common touch is taking Lumley Insurance on a fascinating journey. Once regarded as an unexciting mid-tier insurer with not a lot of future, Lumley under Bhatia’s guidance (and Wesfarmers’ cheque book) has developed in massive leaps. Bhatia’s rise within the rapidly growing Wesfarmers Insurance operation has been dramatic. With degrees in engineering, business administration and finance, he worked as a business transformation consultant before joining QBE Mercantile Mutual in 2003, moving through a succession of jobs there and at QBE before joining Wesfarmers Insurance as Chief Operating Officer in January 2008. A year later he moved across to Lumley as chief executive. What followed involved some top-level redundancies, an equally impressive recruitment of key managers and a redrawing of the company’s strategic plan. Earlier this year Lumley launched its corporate solutions department – a move that signaled the insurer’s determination to claim a place in the top five. Apart from power and know-how, Bhatia also has a patient sole shareholder to bankroll his growth plans. It will be interesting to observe how he positions his re-energised company during the next year.