Page 147 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 13 - NORWICH WINTERTHUR INSURANCE AUSTRALIA LTD
Terry was a huge help in the loss paid retro business. He would perform all the technical calculations pricing etc. The beauty was he was doing this in Norwich, so he was working while everyone in Australia was sleeping!
Terry and Diane became great friends of the family. They always stayed with us at home and he always had to take me on at tennis. He didn’t win of course.
Terry is now retired but every two or so years he and Diane come out to Australia and visit and help sample some red wine.
Diversification
I also had set diversification as a major goal for the NW group in Australia, thus spreading costs and reducing dependency on a single business model.
We purchased Marine and Aviation Management Services Ltd. (MAMS) and MUA (NZ) the New Zealand subsidiary of MAMS for Norwich Winterthur. It was very important to have an outlet in New Zealand, so that we could ensure that board meeting timetables coincided with rugby tests.
In the same period we established Aldersgate Finance Ltd. (Aldersgate) which became the premium funding arm of the group.
In Victoria the State Government ran a tender to appoint workers compensation claims agents. We put in our tender but when the list of successful companies was published, we weren’t on it! The reason was, of course, that nearly all our business was Loss Paid Retro business, so it didn’t appear that we had any significant share of the premium pool. However, we were actually insuring almost every major business in Victoria.
I went to see the Minister armed with letters from all the companies. He was at a loss as to what to do as he had already announced the results of the tender and he couldn’t grant another license, but we were going to cause a hell of a stink. The answer was that he instructed
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