Fortis appoint Harvey

Insurance Brokers' Monthly and Insurance Adviser, Oct 2004

Julian Harvey is the newly appointed chief financial officer for Fortis UK following the planned retirement of Mike Cranston. A chartered accountant, his experience includes senior finance roles within the financial services sector both here and in the USA, including seven years as vice president finance of the Farmers Insurance Group based in Los Angeles. Most recently he has been running his own consultancy business.

Fortis Insurance aims to become one of the UK's top ten profitable underwriters, having just reported overall GWP for the second quarter of 2004 of GBP 294 million, an increase of 11% over the same period in 2003 (GBP 265 million). Commenting on specific markets exclusively supporting the broker and intermediary channel, chief executive Barry Smith says: "In a motor market which is at best static, we have continued to gain market share by widening our product offering. We have increased the number of cars insured by 16%. The travel sector saw record growth of 67% (GBP 16 million) while the SME commercial sector continued to expand at 33% (GBP 25 million). Extensive research into market needs and the development of a wider distribution network has driven this success.

Household has also continued to grow by some 11% (GBP 50 million) up from 2003. Three themes have been driving action in this sector; developing improved product cover, refining the underwriting and focusing on the claims process."