Advice & Expertise, for a range of business challenges
When issues arise within your legal or insurance business, it can be sometimes be challenging to resolve them with your existing team. Perhaps resources are already stretched, or a fresh perspective is needed?
I have a wealth of experience and skills learnt during my 35 years in the insurance & legal industries, and in addition to coaching, am able to provide consultancy services to clients.
Here are some examples of where I can help:
I managed most of RPC’s larger Corporate Insurance clients and was recognised as being one of the best partners in the firm. I have advised clients on how to improve their CRM and provided training on good CRM skills.
I provide training to and advice clients on client relationship management. At RPC I managed most of the firms corporate insurance clients and we as recognised as being one of the best in the firm.
As an insurance litigator, I spent a lot of my professional life advising on insurance and reinsurance coverage issues. I greatly enjoy the challenge of assessing whether a claim is covered and recently helped a Charitable Trust that runs a cinema on whether the Business Interruption section of its policy covered the forced shutdown of cinemas during the Covid Pandemic.
I can help you build your business. I have over thirty years’ experience of building insurance teams at three City firms. After three years at my last firm, RPC, Jonathan Watmough, the managing partner, asked me to stop doing any fee earning work and focus entirely on building the practise which I did for over six years until I retired and started my new career and a coach and consultant. I was one of only two top quartile equity partners to be asked to give up fee earning.
The skills I developed can be applied not just to law firms and other professional practises but to most other businesses.
I have also learnt how to set up a new business from scratch in building Edlin Consulting Ltd.
If your claims team does not have the capacity and needs help managing a large and complex claim, or if you need someone to help plan a cost effective and practical way to resolve a claim or a dispute, I have both the experience and the reputation to help. I can also lend my expertise to department or board governance reviews or other projects that require independent help.
I can help you to resolve disputes in a number of ways;
- Helping you to develop your own strategy to resolve a dispute
- Act as a go between or ambassador to help develop a line of communication
- Managing the dispute and overseeing the appointed lawyers
- Acting as a mediator
- Acting as an arbitrator
With over 35 years’ experience during which I resolved highly complex insurance and reinsurance disputes, I believe that all disputes are capable of self-determination before going to court through negotiation and mediation, and I can help to steer it to a resolution. I am responsible for the second major insurance market dispute (Supply Teachers litigation in 1994) to be resolved by mediation, when I also qualified as a CEDR accredited mediator.
Developing a good line of communication with your opponent at an early stage even when emotions are high invariably pays dividends. Whatever the issue and however strong the emotions, developing, fostering and maintaining a line of communication between the parties (not their lawyers) will invariably speed up the resolution of disputes.
I am a strong advocate of Evershed’s Early Case Assessment, a process and philosophy initially developed by John Heaps.
I have used mediation to resolve a large number of cases during my career including the following:
- Punjab National Bank -v- De Joinville & other: contract frustration policies and the duty of care owed by an insurance broker to a third party
- Supply Teachers litigation: underwriting agencies duties to its principals, Lloyd’s underwriters. second major London market insurance dispute to be resolved by mediation
- Sharp -v- Caudle: following settlement of the Lloyd’s Names litigation, this was the first case on the meaning of “event” in whole account excess of loss policies.
- Centre Parcs – Elvedon Fire: Complex dispute involving the insured, insurers and the broker settled by mediation within 12 months of the fire
- Film Finance Bank: acting for Heaths and Stirling Cooke Brown on the Film Finance Litigation. Heaths were sued in 25 separate actions in the USA, UK and Australia. My team were able to settle all the cases before the trials
- PA LMX Spiral: acting for Willis’s E&O insurers on workers compensation claims. Complex allocation issues and excess layer drop down clauses. Resolved after one of the largest London Market mediations
- South African Silicosis: Acting for London market reinsurers of Anglo’s captive, Holdac
- Ongoing Coverage issues: advising on a very large internal reinsurance arrangement, whereby an intra-group pool of reinsurers will collectively reinsure the group’s principal risk carriers
- Advised on numerous coverage issues on London Market written reinsurances of risks in Spain, Latin America, New Zealand, Thailand, Russia, Virgin Islands, Mexico an the US
- Leading Individual for Corporate Insurance and Insurance disputes in The Legal 500 UK for many years until 2018
My experience as an insurance and reinsurance lawyer and leader and builder of three insurance businesses at City firms enables me to offer a full and complete consultancy service across all different sectors.
I have very strong strategic and relationship building skills and a natural leader. Developing people, relationships with clients and businesses generally are key strengths.
