Page 38 - 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
was that this provided me with my first company car. Mine was a VW. It also meant you got out and about. My job was to introduce business through both agency and broker connections. Most of the agency business was connected to the company’s Life Agents, or Financial Planners as we would call them today. L&G was one of the market leaders in Life Assurance, but unusually we had strong broker connections as well because L&G was a major underwriter of mining and construction risks.
Even in those early years my ambition was to get to be at the top and to be the best, so I set out to be the best salesman in the company and spent an awful lot of time developing broker connections and our agency business. I got to know a number of Indian brokers and did most of the Indian business in and around Johannesburg. In those days, we were measured on the number of policies sold and for every year that I was a Superintendent I won the award. The only difference between me and the others was I used to work at night while they were sleeping. Nothing has changed.
I used to take my Dad(Pop) out in the evening to have a look at the risks I wrote, to ensure that there was sufficient protection. (He was General Manager at that time of Dominion Insurance!) Through this method, I learned a lot about business in a very short time.
You may wonder why number of policies was the main objective. Back then most companies were part of tariff agreements which meant there was no competition on price. Insurance companies operated on a claims ratio between 40% and 50% so profit was taken for granted. The only discounts we could offer were for LTA’s (long term agreements).
It was true to say that insurance was a license to print money. How that changed!
In those days the insurance company itself carried out a wide range of functions, many of which these days are done by other professionals such as the brokers, risk managers, actuaries, etc. Part
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