Claims Excellence Awards: Toasting the talent

The inaugural Insurance Times Claims Excellence Awards took place at the Intercontinental Hotel on London’s Park Lane on 25 May, bringing together nearly 400 of the claims community’s leading practitioners.

The awards celebrated the individuals that made a difference for their businesses and policyholders, as well as initiatives that tackled challenges such as fraud, motor claims and training.

The winners included Marsh’s Barry Jones and Allianz’s Robin Stagg, who were named outstanding individual broker and insurer, respectively.

The Outstanding Insurer Claims Team of the Year award, sponsored by Replacements @ Comet, went to Chubb, while Ageas was highly commended in the category. The Outstanding Broker Claims Team of the Year, sponsored by Ageas, was awarded to Marsh, and Deacon was highly commended.

Opening the awards, Insurance Times publishing director Shân Millie said: “We set out to create transparent, credible and exciting awards, open to all. We also wanted to give you the platform to inspire and to be inspired.

“Your response has blown us away. The volume and quality of entries has exceeded all our expectations in this first year – we appear to have captured your imagination.

“On behalf of the entire Insurance Times brand team, I’d like to thank all our entrants and finalists for your trust and support.

“We also need to thank all our founding sponsors for taking the plunge with us and having the vision to take a risk, and of course our expert judging panel for offering their time, insight and commitment.”

Speaking after the event, editor-in-chief of Insurance Times Ellen Bennett said: “We had a fantastic time creating and judging the awards – and an even better time on the evening itself.

“Thanks to everyone who was there to share it with us – and, rest assured, the Claims Excellence Awards will be back, bigger and better than ever in 2012.”