Weblog - 17 June 2010 | People & Opinion

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A round-up of the latest insurance stories online

Breaking news stories revealing some major ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ in the industry have dominated the web rankings over the past week.

Three stories, all broken first on insurancetimes.co.uk, detailed some high-profile appointments at Zurich and senior departures at AXA and RSA.

Near the top of the list was details of Zurich’s senior management restructure by its UK general insurance chief executive Stephen Lewis. Online subscribers, eager to read about the changes, increased traffic to our site when the news landed in their inboxes.

A similar situation followed when we revealed that Ant Middle was leaving AXA for Aviva. Online readers scrambled on to the site to learn of the departure of the commercial director to its fierce rival. AXA later confirmed his departure.

Our trilogy was complete with the news of Ken Norgrove’s exit from RSA.

But the week’s most popular story was connected to the FSA’s latest disciplinary action as two brokers felt its wrath over client money failings.

Our lead story in last week’s magazine on the Treasury’s investigation into insurance premium tax was also a hit as online readers rushed to read it first online before the print edition.

The release of the FSA competence requirements also caused a bit of a stir. It prompted Trident’s Robert Marshall to write to the editor (see the Letters column, in the print edition, to read what he had to say).

Elsewhere, World Cup anticipation reached fever pitch. The announcement by Lloyd’s of the cost of insurance for the tournament was reported widely, including the BBC site.