All Backchat articles – Page 24
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Backchat
Insurance home time
Forget Sunday roasts and primetime television: a disturbing number of people are spending their precious downtime scouring the internet – for insurance.Data from One Business Insurance found that online inquiries for small businesses peaked between 9pm and 2am on weekdays and 5pm and 7pm on a Sunday. In fact, 62% ...
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Backchat
Deflated by risk
Tesco has banned a children’s entertainer from using balloons during his act in one of its stores because he breaks health and safety rules.Barney Baloney, the clown, usually twists them into animal shapes and hands them to children. But Tesco has told the 47-year-old, also known as Tony Turner, to ...
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Backchat
Ward's white van crush opens new era
Lloyd's chief executive Richard Ward may yet be the new Damien Hirst. Early next year he is to introduce a new sculpture to decorate the world’s oldest insurance market. The sculpture, a white van crushed into a cube, will symbolise Lloyd’s move into the electronic age. The old slip system ...
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Backchat
Walking the plank risk
Attendees at the world’s tenth plank-walking world championships in Sheppey, Kent, were befuddled when its insurers insisted that participants be informed that there was a risk they “may get wet”.Of equal (but potentially more harmful) incredulity was the rule of the competition stating that contestants be “able to swim”. “It’s ...
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Lloyd’s stars in old movies
ITN footage from Lloyd’s has been found after nearly 80 years in the archives. Films made between 1928 and 1961 have come to light and can now be seen on the Lloyd’s website. They include a reconstruction of the original coffee house owned by Edward Lloyd, showing what the world’s ...
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Backchat
The great northern risk
A survey by car insurer Diamond has found yet another reason to steer clear of the North.The report, which rated driving records by occupation as well as location and car type, found that male chefs from Oldham driving a Lexus represented the gravest threat to humanity. They were followed closely ...
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Backchat
The future of claims
Norwich Union used to insure nearly every motorbike in Britain. Then it pulled out of the market. Then it came back in again. But it has outsourced to India and bikers in the UK are having some bizarre experiences. One two-wheeled adventurer was recently unfortunate enough to discover that a ...
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Backchat
Calm down dear, it’s only a map
Another summer survey, this time from insurer esure – and this one reveals the UK public to be a nation of idiots. Apparently, 35% of motorists cannot read a basic road map, while a third of car drivers struggled to read a four-figure grid reference. Moreover, a staggering 83% failed ...
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Backchat
Wigmore bonds with Craig
Backchat continues to move in ever more illustrious circles. While sipping greedily on a martini, spies learned that the insurance industry’s king of cool, Andy Wigmore, has bought the house of none other than incumbent James Bond, Daniel Craig. It is rumoured that the uber-suave policy adviser to the Claims ...
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Backchat
Truth about lies revealed
Insurers will not be overjoyed to see the results of a survey by Royal & SunAlliance revealing the UK to be a nation of liars. Forty five per cent said they would lie to their boss, while 43% would tell porkies to a neighbour, and 41% were prepared to tell ...
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Backchat
Is Tiner a Facebook friend?
Ever keen to win influential friends, Backchat was keen to make contact with former FSA boss John Tiner through his Facebook entry. Tiner, who has only one friend on the web-based community site, FSA chairman Callum McCarthy, was not keen to respond to Backchat’s advances. Given the typical Facebook user ...
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Backchat
Top down, pants off
What we wear says a lot about our personality and our mood, according to a leading UK psychologist, and likewise what we drive expresses how we want to be seen by others.It shouldn’t come as any surprise to Backchat readers to learn then that what we drive also reveals a ...
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Backchat
HSBC rapped for fox hunt cover
An animal rights group has criticised Britain’s biggest bank HSBC for insuring people prosecuted for illegally hunting foxes.Under the arrangement HSBC will pay, perfectly legally, the legal fees for hunters taken to court for breaking the 2005 hunting ban.The chairman of the League Against Cruel Sports asked: “What next – ...
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NIG saves the bait
In catastrophic times, there are always heroic tales of survival against the odds. The Yorkshire floods are no exception. Having come to the financial rescue of fishing supplies business, Bennetts of Sheffield, NIG proudly proclaimed last week that it had played its part in saving hundreds of thousands of lives. ...
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Tutus on a mountaintop
If climbing the highest mountains in England, Scotland and Wales within 24 hours wasn’t testing enough then try doing it while looking pretty in pink.That was precisely the challenge faced by members of Aon’s mergers and acquisitions group (Amag) and knowledge management team as they threw off the shackles of ...
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Backchat
Holding out for a hero
Has the power and reach of Backchat been under-estimated?We thought it was just the witty and humorous of insurance, who bothered scouring the back pages, but it seems the wider media has picked up on some of our featured stars.Just ask the newly-honed managing director of Hero Insurance Services, Paul ...
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Backchat
Housing spat gives Hector a headache
If a recent High Court writ is anything to go by then the trials and tribulations of being the FSA boss will seem like child’s play.Hector Sants, the new chief executive, is reportedly preparing to go head-to-head with a City financier in a bitter row over the lapsed sale of ...
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Backchat
Chatham van faces scrapheap
Lloyd’s Chatham van, which transports the documents to the market’s administrative centre in Kent, will soon be resigned to the history books.Chief executive Richard Ward, in a bid to show he means business when talking of modernising Lloyd’s, is to scrap the van, which makes a twice daily 66-mile round ...
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Backchat
Call of Lark fuels ‘market rumours’
The insurance industry is awash with rumours of acquisitions and sales ?– if you’re not being bought then you’re buying someone else.The latest in a growing list of potential takeover targets is Lark Group – acquisitors themselves just months ago.The company, as expected, has denied all knowledge of approaches from ...
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Backchat
Goodbye to NU brand?
The UK could be saying farewell to the Norwich Union (NU)?brand. New Aviva chief Andrew Moss is thought to be considering axing the long-standing NU brand in favour of the Aviva marque, in a move aimed at boosting the company’s global recognition.UK policies are currently branded under both names. It ...
