Incoming Master Speech

Common Hall - 6th October 2011

Immediate Past Master, Wardens, Past Masters, members of the Livery.

I am both thrilled and extremely honoured to have been chosen as your 32nd Master of the WCI. To be one of such a small group of people is indeed a very special privilege and like every Master before me I shall do everything I am able to continue to enhance the reputation and influence of the Livery both in Insurance matters, Financial Services matters and of course as much as I am able the Lord Mayor and members of the City Civic.

Today I find myself with mixed emotions as I take over this prestigious role. First and foremost I am of course excited as indeed is Ann in becoming Master and Mistress of the Livery but I am also somewhat saddened that our Clerk of the last 14 years is not with us to accept the intended appointment in his retirement that of Honorary Liveryman. Over the last few years and the last year as Senior Warden in particular I had grown very fond of Len and I learned a huge amount from him about the City Civic and the Livery. I am disappointed that he is not going to be here throughout my year of office to see how his latest student, in a long line of students, carries out the role of Master but I am even more upset for him and for Eva that he should pass away just one month from retirement without having any of the pleasures and benefits retirement should bring. Len however will be much in my thoughts as I fulfil my duties as your Master and I hope many of the Livery will be coming to pay their respects to Len at our Memorial Service for him on 16th November.

I would like to add my own welcome to that of Immediate Past Master Haslock in welcoming Sarah Clark as our new Clerk. Sarah had to endure a very rigorous process of selection and interviews and we were delighted when offered the role she accepted and was preparing to join us especially so when Len died so unexpectedly. Sarah has provided stalwart support both to the immediate Past Master, myself and to Liz Brown our Assistant Clerk both before formally joining and also picking up the reins without any possible handover from Len. This has helped confirm that the Interview process and our first choice candidate was absolutely correct and I should like to offer my thanks to her and to welcome Sarah as our new Clerk. I would also like to extend thanks to Liz who has also been tremendous during this very difficult period and who has been positive and supportive of the changes taking place and has provided every assistance to Sarah.

I should now like to turn to my proposals for my year of office and what a year we have in front of us – the Olympics and Para Olympics in our home City with no doubt major involvement of the City Civic and thus the Livery companies. Then there is the Queens 60th Jubilee Anniversary again with celebrations in our home City.

My own intentions for the year will neither cost the same as the Olympics, you will be pleased to hear, nor will it be as grand as I am sure the Queen’s Jubilee will be but I do promise you that my overriding theme for the year will be met and that is it will be FUN. There will be music, laughter, good food, great wine and plenty of camaraderie for us all to enjoy.

My personal objectives for the team this year will be to add to all of the work that has been done by previous Masters, building on the strong foundation and traditions of our Livery but making positive changes to help grow the Livery and meet the challenges of the 21st Century. This will translate into a number of actions which the Wardens, Clerk and I will be working on over the year.

The first of these actions will be to raise the profile of the Livery within the insurance profession. I believe that our Livery is something of which we should be truly proud but I suspect that for many and too many we are a best kept secret and our relevance to the profession is not understood nor appreciated. Raising our profile will need us to enunciate these attributes very clearly and carefully and it is hoped it might help to achieve my second action.

Our membership is obviously the heart of our Livery but like many livery companies we do suffer from the ageing effect. We need to ensure we are attractive and appealing to the next, not only our own generation. We need to be able to attract new members from this younger generation ensuring that they understand the value, pleasure and fun they will get from belonging to our Livery. In turn increased membership will increase our income and this will enable us to invest in different and new events.
Our third action over the course of this year will be to see what we can do to increase our charitable funds and give us some more options as to what differences in education, hardship or other charitable cause we can make with these funds.

My final action for the year relates to communication and marketing. Our systems and processes have not always allowed us to communicate with our members and insurance profession in general in an easy and meaningful way, especially for a Modern Company in the 21st Century. We intend to improve both the frequency and method of communication with members using electronic means, emails etc and to improving our web site which is in need of a complete refresh. With this in mind I am delighted to announce that our first electronic news bulletin will go out next Monday to all members for whom we have email addresses. It is intended that we will be sending electronic newsletters bi monthly thereafter. Do ensure that you don’t miss out and make sure that the office has your up to date email details.

One word of reassurance I would like to add is that please do not think of any of the actions or ideas that I have as radical. At heart I am a traditionalist and I am immensely proud of our heritage and I for one will fight for our traditions but I equally am one who embraces change especially when it will make us stronger, better and more influential as a livery in the 21st Century. We may not be one of the great 12 and rank as number 92 in seniority but let us make sure we are in the top 5 influencers to City Civic and the Lord Mayor in their work in selling the City and the importance of the insurance profession at home and abroad.

I have chosen as my charity for the year Turning Point, the leading health and social care organisation which provides services to people with complex needs, including those affected by drug and alcohol misuse, mental health problems and those with a learning disability. As many of you here will know from personal experiences in your own offices mental health issues are now one of the major reasons for absence from the workplace damaging the family unit, the economic unit and also the financial state of the country. Turning Point has gargantuan ambitions to help:

  • The 3.8m people who are dependent on alcohol
  • The 330,000 problem drug users in England
  • The estimated 210,000 people in England with profound learning disabilities
  • The 1 in 4 British adults who experience at least one diagnosable mental health problem in any one year
  • The one third of people in mental health services who also have a drug and alcohol problem
  • The 40% of young people with a learning disability who have significant mental health issues
  • These are not just statistics but represent people who need real help.

Finally let me mention a little about the events which are coming up.

First the Annual Church Service and Installation Dinner on 27th October. I urge you to come to the Church Service where you will hear some wonderful music from the Choir and from soloist Helen Pritchard singing Calun Lan a beautiful Welsh Hymn the words of which were written by the grandfather of a dear, sadly now deceased Brigadier friend of mine Rolph James.

From the beautiful St Lawrence Jewry church we will be coming straight back to Insurance Hall for champagne and a splendid dinner. During dinner we will be accompanied by musicians from the Guildhall school of music and we have Lord Michael Howard as our guest speaker

In November we have Len Walters memorial service as already mentioned.

The guest speakers for our Spring lunches will be Lord Victor Adebowale who is not only a marvellous and passionate speaker but is also the Chief Executive of Turning Point and at the February lunch will be Likhit Wagle who is IBM Global Leader for Banking and Financial Markets. He is exceptionally talented speaker and will I am sure have a very interesting and relevant point of view

Many other events are in the planning, including a Ladies event and will be announced over the course of the next few months via newsletters, e bulletins and e mails.

It is going to be a busy year, it is going to be a year of change and a year of development but above all Wardens, Past Masters and members of the Livery it is going to be FUN

Thank you





Author Tim Ablett

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Master - Tim Ablett