Page 182 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 18 - INDUSTRY AFFAIRS, ICA AND MY BOARD CAREER TAKES OFF
During this period, I must say with some embarrassment that I also grew in profile. I decided to develop a new persona. This involved changing my dress code and an obsession with my hair. Tongue in cheek, I would say that I must have been one of the best dressed insurance executives in town. I have always had a keen interest in the ties I wear, as I believe they make a statement. I give great credit to Peter Jackson , my tailors, who provided me with their new suits on the condition that I advertised the suits in The Financial Review. You can just imagine the reaction of the Board of ICA.
When I came to retire, NIBA gave me a farewell function at which they ribbed me about my hairstyle. This was something I exploited just about every time I spoke. I would always make reference to my hair and I did on most occasions bring laughter at my own expense. On one occasion, when I was the ICA President, I had two photographs in the Annual Report, one with my hair touched up and the other without. I was asked a question at the ICA Annual Dinner as to who was the other person. Quick as a flash I said it was my son.
Market concentration, which today sees the five largest groups controlling over 80% of the business had not happened. In the early 1990s there was only one company approaching 5% of the market and that was the NRMA which was solely New South Wales based. This meant that companies did not do their own lobbying and public affairs and they were generally very dependent on the ICA to represent their interests. The CEO’s gave us their strong support. ICA was as a result very influential and took a leadership role for the industry.
The number of issues we dealt with was enormous. These can be seen from the ICA Annual Reports for the different years. Sadly, ICA no longer produces an Annual Report. It would take far too long here to list all the issues in which we had a hand, but we were very good at solving issues and problems and as someone once said to me, if we didn’t have a problem we would go out and create one ourselves, so we could fix it.
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