Jim Ivers, managing director of Knowles Adjusters Ireland, has revealed he was personally left £150,000 out of pocket when Independent Insurance collapsed.
Ivers was managing director of Property & Casualty Services (PCS) Dublin, after his company, Jim Ivers Adjusters, was bought by PCS in March 2000.
However, he said Independent failed to pay him the full agreed amount for Jim Ivers Associates, leaving him with a £150,000 loss.
“They offered a fair price for the business and they paid something on closing (the deal) ,” Ivers said.
Ivers was promised a proportion of the profits of PCS Dublin over those two years.
“The rest of the deal was to come in the form of an earn-out (the remaining purchase cost) over two years, but it never came,” he said.
“I could cry about spilt milk, but I'm not the only one who was rear-ended by Independent, so it's time for looking forward.”
PCS was Independent's loss adjusting arm in the UK and Ireland.
After Independent collapsed, Royal & Sunalliance (R&SA) bought PCS's UK operations.
R&SA intends to make PCS its internal loss adjusting service.
Ivers said he had several talks with R&SA at the time, but was not really interested in being tied to a single insurance company again.
Last week, Ivers announced that he was disbanding PCS Dublin and, with his four senior PCS adjusters, Lily Owens, Tom Murphy, James Landers and Frances Kane, starting a new firm called Knowles Adjusters Ireland.
The new firm is backed by UK company James R Knowles and has offices in Dublin and Cork.
Ivers said many of his former Jim Ivers Associates customers had already pledged support for the new business.
“Our business is all about people and people support you because of personal contact,” he said.
But he said he would not bring PCS business to the new firm.
He said Irish insurers had never been keen to deal with PCS because it was owned by their competitor and, once the Independent business was gone, the Dublin office was left without work.
He said the Dublin office's 90 staff had “scattered to the four corners of the earth” pursuing new careers.
