President's Update
Annual Report 2023
Russell Higginbotham, CEO of Swiss Re Solutions, was elected President of the Chartered Insurance Institute for 2023. In this statement he reflects on his presidential theme, the progress made by the CII in the year and welcomes his successor.
“It has been a huge honour to serve as CII President since January 2023 and to work with all manner of people, both within the CII and from across the industry on ways to raise public trust in the insurance and financial planning professions. The CII has always been part of my career. As a graduate trainee, I was handed my textbooks and enrolled in studying for the ACII, before later going on to become a Fellow of the CII. After spells abroad, I returned to the UK in 2010 and became involved with the Insurance Institute of London, later becoming its president, which was another great honour. This period reinforced how the local institutes, with their offering of continuing professional development, lectures, learning and social activity, really bring the insurance community together. In my time as CII president, I have therefore worked to recognise the importance of the local institutes and the many volunteers that make them work.
Promoting and supporting resilience
I have engaged with members and local institutes to better understand their needs at grassroots level, because our members are the lifeblood of our organisation. Sometimes they are the glue holding things together, sometimes the oil making the wheels turn smoothly.
My presidential theme was focused on one of the longer-term strategic challenges facing our sector, namely promoting and supporting resilience for the CII, the sector and most importantly society in general.
The pandemic was a unique period in living history. Whilst in many ways it is consigned to the past, in other ways it continues to impact us day to day and likely will do so for years, possibly decades, to come. Naturally, we think about the impact of the pandemic on our personal and working lives. However, there are wider impacts – long-term health, working patterns, work-life balance and so on.
For the CII, for example, fewer people were taking exams and, alongside this, the number of members overall fell for the first time in many years. Having this sort of disruption to members’ engagement with the organisation is clearly not helpful. It is hugely gratifying therefore to see the progress that has been made by the team over the last year in stabilising the performance of the Group, with all entities in the CII returning a surplus driven by growth in membership and enrolment and prudent management of costs.
This came alongside the launch of the new five-year CII strategy in April 2023, based on significant member consultation and subsequent work by the executive and the Board. What was most pleasing about this new roadmap for me was the strong focus on the core values and mission of the CII, namely world-class education, lifetime learning and professionalism. All supported by improving customer service and enabled by an increasingly digital proposition.
By building trust, encouraging professionalism and providing continuing professional development, the CII ensures that the people that work in the insurance sector are best placed to develop the right products and help the customers they serve.
A robust CII, with resilient foundations, is far-better placed to achieve this goal.
Ensure that businesses continue to trade
This can be achieved both by fostering the responsible expansion of the insurance industry around the world where the demand for insurance is still nascent; and, in mature markets like the UK, by encouraging the industry to provide enough affordable cover to individuals, families or businesses to promote improved resilience to the external factors that can affect all our lives.
The principal role of insurance is to enable societal resilience. In other words, to be the safety net where other forms of mitigation fail and to ensure that businesses continue to trade, that individuals can access healthcare and enjoy a good and long retirement and where, in the worst case, families can move forward, even in the direst of circumstances. This is our calling in the insurance sector. This is why we do what we do. This is why we should be proud but also never truly satisfied, as there is always more that we can do.
Resilience works on many different levels. I have focused on the highest level for the insurance sector, but equally corporates need to be resilient financially, to honour the promises made to our customers. Institutions like the CII need to be resilient too, to fulfil our mission of providing education, training, professionalism and continuous learning to our members and the insurance sector overall.
As I hope I have shown, the CII has an important role to play in how we move forward as a profession. Through the achievement of its strategic goals, it will become sustainable and resilient long-term and help build and maintain public trust in the insurance, financial planning and mortgage advice professions.
I would like to thank my predecessor as President, Peter Blanc, for his support when I started this role and welcome Ian Callaghan as President for 2024. His focus on putting members front and centre of the Institute, underlining their importance to the organisation and putting the spotlight on how being part of the CII can shape your career as an insurance professional, is exactly the right one at this time in the CII’s development.”