Page 187 - harryDEC12_clean.iba

I belonged now to the category of producers, the „business getters," whose job it was permanently to look for new, lucrative business connections in specifically allocated lines of business and territorially defined areas.
On top of that it fell on us to articulate the requirements for new clients and put them into comprehensible insurance terms and to define and formulate the contents of a contract. There was no such think as templates for contracts for that; almost all policies were „manuscript“ policies, which demand a high degree of knowledge of clauses, conditions and trade practices. Once more I was thrown without much introduction into cold water. Somehow that seemed familiar to me, but as in the past I accepted the new challenge with restrained enthusiasm. Thanks God there was also John, my partner and mentor. Twelve years older than I and with more than 25 years of experience in the London Market, he knew all of the insurers and trade practices of the Market, including the dirty ones and was an expert in what is called "non-proportional Re-insurance". In fact he had himself conceived many new Re-insurance models with exotic names like "cascade coverage," “drop down layer” names which came to him in his dreams during night, as he once confided in me. His own concepts had found entry into the insurance Market and were copied on all sides. I shared a sparsely equipped office, a glass case with a shutter, with my partner John Gibbs, and we were given a secretary named Moira, who was not lacking in attractiveness, and that surely brightened up the mornings after a strenuous trip, only topped by her always ambiguous observations that were never missing in the morning, that was something you could be sure of. Privately London became a new experience for me. Nothing here was as I was used to in Hamburg. There was no comfortable, luxurious office, no morning drive in the Aston Martin to my workplace, no parking space in a private garage. All these privileges were suddenly gone. Book closed.
oOo
I was now simply one of fifteen „directors“; an imposing title, yes, but on the other hand I had to take the tube every morning, like everybody else - the Jubilee line from Maida Vale Station to change at Westminster to the District Line, to Monument and from there ten minutes on foot to the office, all in a crush of people, brokers, insurers, secretaries and clerks rushing on their way to their workplaces. Girls put on make-up in the rattling and swaying tube trains, how, they managed that, without converting their facial expressions into that of clowns, I will never understand. In summer they wore short skirts and high heels and in winter somewhat longer skirts and high heels, always with bare legs whatever the external temperature was, as
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