Insurance
My life has fallen into a few stages.
As a child, I lived in Box Hill when it was a Village. I then became Pastor to the Slums of Inner Melbourne for eight years. I was then a Country Parson and a Teacher at a One Teacher Bush School out at Jackson Creek in Western Victoria and then for thirteen years, I was a Suburban Minister in one of Australia’s largest suburban ministries.
And now, for more than 20 years I’ve been Superintendent in Sydney of Wesley Mission, Australia’s largest church ministry.
I’ve told you stories of people in each of these places.
Tonight I want you to come with me into the heart of the city.
I guess I first became interested in the value of insurance, particularly life insurance, when my mother and I went out one night looking for my absent father. It was late and he had not returned home. At the corner of the hill that led up to our house under the one street lamp in the area we saw the body of a man lying in the gutter. It was my father. He had died of alcohol poisoning. I was eight at the time. My father had left his business and our family of four children of whom I was the eldest and my young widowed mother in a parlous condition. He had borrowed heavily to buy his business. Unbeknownst to my father, my mother was anxious about the debts and what would happen to her and the children if anything had happened to my father. She had arranged with a man to come and visit her once a week. I didn’t understand it except he was a nice friendly man who always came at the same time to our house and knocked at the front door. My mother gave him one shilling. Later I found out that he was an AMP collecting agent who went from door to door collecting money from people on a weekly basis to pay for life insurance policies that they had taken out on family members. I don’t know for how long my mother had paid her shilling a week, but after my fathers death I know that man came around to express his sympathy and grief and gave my mother a cheque that very day which was enough money to pay off all of my father’s debts and to pay off the debts on the business. That meant that my mother, although she had no income, nevertheless owned a house, a significant business property and a business that employed quite a large number of people. It was never easy taking over that business and running it with four little children, including a baby of only three months. But my mother did that. It was the AMP life insurance cover that enabled her to start as a businesswoman and end her life as a very comfortable and moderately well off person.
Two things came out of that; I hated alcohol, and I was enamoured with the idea of insurance.
I remember some years later at high school, writing an essay that I still possess of thirty or more pages in length, ten times the length required by our English master. It was on the theme that was currently being promoted in a public debate in Victoria about extending the closing hours of hotels from 6 pm. The theme was ‘Stick to 6 in 56’. The publicans in Melbourne were promoting later operating hours in order to accommodate visitors for the 1956 Olympic Games. Looking back at that essay now I realised how passionate I was against social drinking, a passion that continues to this day. A few years later, now married, and having the arrival of our first child, my mother said to me, “Son, have you got a life insurance policy? You remember what happened with your father”. Of course I remembered what happened to my father. I realised I needed to get some life insurance. I purchased a simple life insurance policy with AMP because after all they had been the company that had stood by my mother, but I needed to cover my car, my house and contents as well.
A middle aged man (who is alive today and nearing his 100th birthday) Mr W. W. Saunders, was a Churches of Christ minister who was the secretary of the Victorian Temperance Alliance, I had admired the way he had publicly argued for restrictions on alcohol sales. He had taken me under his wing and had been a great encouragement to me. One day in 1961 I read that he had become a director of a new insurance company just established in Australia called Ansvar Insurance. This was an insurance company for non-drinkers only and they provided very competitive rates for car drivers. This caught my attention immediately. I learnt that Ansvar, which is a Swedish word for ‘Responsibility’ was an insurance company that insured non-drinkers only. In the early part of the century, temperance leaders from several Swedish organisations formed a large motoring association especially for the non-drinking community. It was recognised that people who drank alcohol and then drove cars had far more accidents than people who didn’t drink. Therefore by only insuring non-drinkers the company became extremely profitable. In fact Ansvar and its motoring organisation became the largest insurer of motor vehicles in Sweden during this period of time. Buoyed by the Swedish experience they had expanded into new countries such as Denmark, Norway, England, America, Japan, West Germany, Holland, Ireland, and Australia and New Zealand.
The directors of this new company were the Temperance Alliance Directors from each state of Australia. Newly founded the Australian Ansvar Company moved its national and Victorian branch offices into a magnificent new building in Collins Street Melbourne and opened up offices in each of the states. The chairman through many years of growth was a distinguished leader of the Temperance Movement in NSW, Mr. Eric McPherson, an accountant and shrewd business brain.
Ansvar had a committed belief that people who did not drink were better drivers and had funded some university research that proved the case.
Insuring non-drinking drivers was the basis of their insurance, however as the years went by, other companies seeing Ansvar’s success first started to give discounts to drivers who didn’t drink and then because of the great push by Ansvar, the churches and the Temperance Society, the State Governments one after the other began to realise the tragedy of drink driving and legislation was introduced regarding blood alcohol levels, and something else I had long advocated publicly, random breath testing and the compulsory wearing of seat belts. Indeed when I first came to Wesley Mission in the late 1970’s NSW did not have these three pieces of legislation in place and I argued publicly, gathered statistics from all over the world and confronted politicians with the demand for compulsory seatbelt wearing, random breath testing and .05 blood alcohol levels. Consequently we have been proved right over and over again as the road toll has dramatically decreased.
This meant that an insurance company for non-drinkers began to gradually lose its competitive edge over other companies. Something new had to be done to help the insurance company develop and grow.
One other thing that impressed me about Ansvar was that it was putting its profits made every year, back into the community. It had funded research on issues of the dangers of abuse of alcohol and it also had produced some marvellous films aimed at young people to indicate the dangers of abuse of alcohol. One of those films was quite dramatic. It was based upon research in a university on the impact of alcohol on driving skills. The film was called ‘Danger Level’ and it showed beyond any doubt that when bus drivers drove their busses on difficult road courses and under narrow bridges, they were very skilful but over a period of hours when given successive drinks they became much more confident in their driving skills, took greater risks and unknown to the drivers the road was narrowed and in the experiment the bridge was narrowed and the height of the bridge lowered. Consequently, drivers who had alcohol in their blood stream took more risks and as a result crashed their buses, tried to pass them under bridges that were too low and so on. I must have screened that film a hundred times in schools and church youth groups as an introduction to discussion on the abuse of alcohol. I was always appreciative of the work that Ansvar had done in producing that film.
I had one other reason for appreciating them. In 1964, I broke a windscreen in my car from a stone being thrown up off a gravel road. I was a country parson at this time and broken windscreens were a very common occurrence in the country. Before I renewed my policy that year I had rung the Ansvar office, spoken to a young insurance clerk who assured me that if my windscreen was broken then I wouldn’t lose my long-standing no-claim bonus. Obviously I resigned with Ansvar on that understanding. Later that year a stone went through the windscreen and I discovered that Ansvar had cancelled my no-claim policy. This made me very angry as I had a clear understanding that I wouldn’t lose the no-claim bonus. I rang up Ian Williams, a very young senior accountant with the company and complained that it was a claim and that it was company policy that I would lose my no claim bonus. I argued with him on the phone that I had specifically rung that one of his staff had given me the assurance, and even if that staff member had been wrong then they should stick by his word. Ian Williams explained that the young man had recently been terminated from the company because he didn’t stick to company policy. I explained that that was their problem and not mine and that if an assurance had been given by a member of the sales force then the company should stick by it. Ian Williams agreed with me immediately and I retained my no-claim bonus which has benefited me ever since. I was very impressed with the way Ian handled that issue. Some years later, Ian Williams now General Manager of Australia rang and asked if I would consider becoming a director of Ansvar Insurance Ltd with the retirement of the chairman Eric McPherson who had represented NSW over all those years. I gladly agreed and became a director of the company and then later on Ansvar Life Insurance Company. The new chairman was Sir Llewlyn Edwards the deputy premier of Queensland. The head of the Salvation Army International, General Eva Burrows, later succeeded him. These three chairmen all played a significant part in my life.
Throughout the 80’s and 90’s I was honoured to be a director of the insurance company. This had some interesting side benefits. I remember after the disastrous earthquakes in Newcastle, when many of the insurance companies refused to pay for the damage that had been caused or else caused much anguish with their clients by being very tardy. Ansvar Insurance Company had a lot of people who had insured buildings, churches and motor vehicles damaged in the earthquake. Within a few days of the earthquake I went to Newcastle representing the insurance company, visited people everywhere and as the first insurance company in Australia to pay out, handed over cheques to the people in the earthquake ravaged city. This received immense publicity on radio, television and in the press as we were the first and we never argued with the suffering client. In fact one church that insured its new property only a matter of five months earlier with us received a cheque for in excess of $1 million. I passed out million dollar cheques and businesses, families and individuals rejoiced at Ansvar’s prompt and courteous service.
Ansvar Insurance Company always had a problem with NSW. We had made a profit in every state in Australia every year as a general rule, but it was always difficult to make a profit in NSW. Frequent hail storms damaged so much property, and the NRMA who made most of their money through their non-insurance business and investments used to undercut all of the other insurance companies making it very difficult for a small company to make a profit on motor insurance. We moved out of encouraging people in NSW, only insuring those people who knew us and really wanted to come to us. This proved a master decision and the profits meant so much more could be done in the community. At this time, Ansvar Insurance Company expanded its scope insuring not only home and content and motor vehicles but particularly churches and retirement villages and church owned property. Today Ansvar is the largest insurer of churches and church related properties in the nation.
My work as a director of the company meant not only many trips to Melbourne on a regular basis for board meetings but I felt in the early 80’s obligation bound to study the implication of being the director of a public listed company or even of a private company. This led me into a study of company structures and the roles of directors and the development of business corporations. In turn this helped greatly in the life of Wesley Mission in setting up Wesley Film Productions Pty Ltd and a whole range of other business activities in which I was involved. Eventually I was elected a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, wrote a book on governance and was frequently used to lecture companies on the roles of executive and non-executive directors.
At the same time I was speaking at many insurance companies firstly to sales meetings and later to executive staff. My old friends at the AMP particularly the New Zealand, Queensland and South Australian Manager John Dingle invited me to speak to his company on many occasions. In all I addressed more than 40 occasions, gatherings of AMP staff. In one way I became a bit of a specialist speaking to insurance companies and over the years spoke to more than a hundred gatherings of insurance staff. Eventually I addressed the Life Underwriters Associations National Meetings in Australia and the greatest gathering of insurance people in the world the million dollar round table in San Francisco to 22 thousand of the world’s best.
My time with Ansvar Insurance was a most enjoyable one and it developed my skills in a way I would never have realised.
The thing that always impressed me was the way Ansvar put its profits back into community organizations. Ansvar has become major sponsors of events such as the recent Anglican Synod of Australia, the National Christian Youth Convention, The Australian Health and Welfare Chaplains Association, the Australian Christian Legal Convention, The Women’s Christian Temperance Union World Convention, The Easter Celebration of Word and Song in Sydney each year, The Sports and Life Orientated Ministries Sports Focus Awards, and the Worship Summit in Perth.
Currently Ansvar has put a lot of money into helping programs to help youth such as Sports Chaplains, programs in schools helping teenagers understand the importance of their relationships and behaviour, being the major sponsors of Scouting in Australia, Youth for Christ, Teen Challenge, Drug Arm Australia and Focus on the Family. All of these organizations have appreciated the financial support of Ansvar. That company started out to give cheaper policies to people who drove responsibly. Over the years they have demonstrated their responsibility by putting profits from their company back into Australian Community Organisations who teach people responsible living. In 1989 as a director of the company I was responsible for recommending and appointing Alan Smith as the NSW Manager. If you ever want to talk about insurance matters, ring Alan at the Parramatta office and he will help you. In the last year, Ansvar merged with Ecclesiastical Insurance Group of Great Britain, one of the world’s largest insurance companies and today EIG Ansvar has gone to greater strengths. The time had come for me to retire as a company director and at the merger step down to allow another to be elected in my place, the very high profile Rev. Tim Costello of Collins Street Baptist Church in Melbourne.
My mother’s commitment upon my father’s death started me in what has been a 40-year association with the insurance industry. I believe God honours people who act responsibly in the community, who do not abuse drugs and other substances, who act responsibly toward the community, and who take providential care for their own future.
The city of Sydney would grow to be one of the world’s great cities and Wesley Mission would grow to be one of the world’s great churches and I was privileged to spend each day in the heart of both.