Page 189 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 18 - INDUSTRY AFFAIRS, ICA AND MY BOARD CAREER TAKES OFF
Industry Issues
During my years at ICA, both as a Director (later President) and then Chief Executive, we handled a myriad of issues on behalf of the insurance industry. I have covered in some detail our achievements in the areas of dispute resolution, codes of practice and industry image.
As I said before, if I had to write about all the other issues we handled this would be an encyclopaedia not a book. In the 1992- 1993 ICA Annual Report I said:
“ISSUES:
The Insurance Council is handling more than 100 issues at National and State level with senior management responsible for developing and coordinating suitable responses...”
The most challenging point of this is that as CEO you were expected to know everything, whether that was responding to a member for whom it might be a subject very dear to their heart or lobbying a politician or fielding a question at a conference or a lunch. Was I “a Jack of all Trades and a Master of None”? Clearly in this regard my business strategies came to the fore, which were first to surround myself with clever people who could deal with the individual issues or to know when I needed expert advice be it legal, accounting or actuarial and secondly to be vaguely right rather than positively wrong.
Nevertheless, here is a sample of some of the issues we have dealt with. Several of these are perennial chestnuts, which I suspect will go around in circles for evermore.
Privatisation
The industry and ICA has at various times had to confront nationalisation of statutory or compulsory insurances by the State Governments in the areas of workers compensation, motor third- party bodily injury and minor products such as builders warranty. At
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