A classy rebranding party with rugby theme, a special scent for new office digs, advent adverts land and market personality reveals second Santa linked job. What has the insurance industry been up to of late? You heard it here first…
Rewarding rebrand
Financial technology firm Ncino celebrated its October 2025 rebrand and fresh lick of logo paint last month by holding an exclusive three course lunch for around 140 guests at London hotel The Ned on 20 November 2025.
Attended by Insurance Times editor Katie Scott, the afternoon included a Q&A with English rugby union player Ellie Kildunne, as well as a short panel discussion featuring Biba regulation director David Sparkes, co-founder and co-chair at the Insurance Cultural Awareness Network, Ajay Mistry, and Gillian Brennan, senior broker proposition manager at Aviva. The conversation was chaired by Ashleigh Gwilliam, director of insurance industry growth at Ncino.
Held in a luxurious private dining room at The Ned, Scott’s favourite course was dessert – a moist rum baba style pudding with orange flavours and lashings of cream.
Smells like home
When intermediary Specialist Risk Group (SRG) moved into its new London-based St Botolph Building headquarters in September 2025, it brought more into the blank office than just desks, chairs and computer hardware – the firm introduced a unique SRG scent.
The custom company created perfume is pumped around professionals using St Botolph Building’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) system, designed to forge a welcoming sense of familiarity when staff attend the premises.
While the scent was initially launched with SRG’s move into St Botolph Building, the broker is now rolling out the smell to its other locations. For sites that do not have HVAC systems, electronic diffusers will be used to distribute the special whiff – the scent notes of which remain a closely guarded secret within the business.
Advent advert lands
Insurance software provider Genasys has fully leapt into the Christmas spirit by joining the UK’s retailers in the annual battle for the best Christmas related advert.
The insurtech’s offering is a short, artificial intelligence generated film – entitled Something for Me – that follows overworked and exhausted chief technology officer Polly C. Admin, who finally gets approval from her company board to implement Genasys’ policy administration technology. She is then delighted to receive ”all 12 gifts of modern insurance technology arriving at once”.
Andre Symes, chief executive at Genasys, said: ”Insurance chief technology officers shouldn’t have to be human duct tape for broken systems.
“When Polly’s up at 5am, it’s not because she loves early mornings – it’s because she’s become the workaround for technology that doesn’t work. We built our platform to give people like her what they’ve been sketching on scrap paper for years – systems that actually do the job.”
Training for a new role
A key indicator for UK general insurance that the Christmas season has well and truly arrived is when Branko Bjelobaba, principal at compliance consultancy Branko, dons his festive garb to take on a seasonal role – volunteering to play Santa at Leighton Buzzard Railway, one of England’s longest and oldest narrow gauge lines.
Bjelobaba takes this part-time position very seriously and has performed the role at the railway for the past 15 years.
Insurance Times ho ho hopes that the venue’s visitors enjoy meeting this very merry Santa.
The Speculator
This month, the Insurance Times team was certainly speculating whether they would ever emerge from Markel UK’s London headquarters on Fenchurch Street after getting trapped in a service stairwell following an event on 9 December 2025.
The event in question was hosted by broking trade body Biba, which was launching its 2026 conference theme with an evening of drinks, canapes and cupcakes at Markel UK’s scenic office location in London’s Walkie Talkie building.
Upon departing the shindig, however, a number of Insurance Times staffers – flanked by individuals from Ageas UK and Biba too – discovered that their guest passes providing access to the building’s lifts and communal areas were not fully functioning, leaving the group stranded by the service stairwell after taking a vertical sojourn in the service lift.
Luckily, Biba’s regulation director, David Sparkes, saved the day and released the bemused bunch back into Markel UK’s reception.
In the vein of Biba’s conference theme, it was definitely ‘Time:To’ leave the building!
Since joining Insurance Times, Katie has successfully obtained a number of industry accolades. Most recently, at Biba's 2025 Journalist and Media Awards, Katie was named the overall winner and received the Journalist of the Year trophy, alongside the Best Thought Leadership Award for her briefing article on reproductive health MGA Juniper and how insurance can be used to positively impact taboo subjects.View full Profile
Hosted by comedian and actor Tom Allen, 34 Gold, 23 Silver and 22 Bronze awards were handed out across an amazing 34 categories recognising brilliance and innovation right across the breadth of UK general insurance.
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