Page 37 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 3 - JOHANNESBURG TO DURBAN TO CAPE TOWN TO PORT ELIZABETH AND BACK TO JOHANNESBURG
Chapter 3 - Johannesburg to Durban to Cape Town to Port Elizabeth and back to Johannesburg
Johannesburg
After a short time I was transferred back to Head Office.
Initially I was disappointed, particularly because while I was in Northern Rhodesia I paid no tax as this was picked up by the company. On my return, I was given a position in the Accident Department.
It is really interesting to compare the products we had then with today. On the domestic front, policies have changed little. On the commercial side however we used to have very traditional individual contracts which would be almost unrecognisable compared with what we have today.
Everything was individual policies in those days. Of course, there were no computers and we had to write the policies, especially commercial policies, by hand. In other words, we designed them from scratch. You can just imagine how complex it was preparing a policy in relation to professional indemnity or liability for large risks. The poor typists or secretaries had to type them using a typewriter with carbon paper for the copies. Woe betide them if they made mistakes because they would have to do the whole document again. There was no word processing, spell checks etc. then.
Following the time spent in the Accident Department, I was transferred to the Property Department as its Head. I won’t pretend that I knew a lot about it, but my number two was brilliant, so I used to exploit his talents.
Underwriting was not really my forte, but I really enjoyed it, especially designing policies. I was eventually promoted to Superintendent. The high point of being made a Superintendent
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