Guernsey Press

Insurance Corporation founder due to retire after 35 years

ONE of the leading figures in the Channel Islands' insurance industry is poised to retire later this year – 35 years after the islands allowed him to fulfil his dreams.

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Peter Walpole moved to Guernsey from London in 1979 and soon spotted a gap in the local market, with no bespoke insurance products accounting for local considerations.

'Brokers were all selling UK products, standard UK products at standard UK rates. I saw the scope to create Insurance Corporation – to offer brokers local service, or to deal direct, with local products, local terms and local rates,' he said.

'I had always wanted to set up my own insurance company.

'That would have been very expensive in the UK, but the opportunity to start from scratch here in a market with benign weather and a low crime rate, it was an opportunity to carve a niche, give customers a deal and make a profit.'

Insurance Corporation of the Channel Islands launched in 1982 with £500,000 in share capital from a single room in Ann's Place. The company was sold to Royal Insurance in 1986, having moved into the Jersey market the previous year, and still operates as an autonomous subsidiary of RSA Insurance Group.

Mr Walpole said the great storm of October 1987 proved to be a game changer for the company, which reacted quickly to the overnight devastation and used the crisis to cement its role in the islands' business communities.

'So often these things can seem like the end of the world and they prove to be the best thing that's happened to you,' he said.

'We doubled our claims department – it was all hands on deck, we had everybody out seeing people, getting interim payments out quickly, and the street cred we got from that was enormous – it really was a cracker.'

A longer version of this interview appears in the May edition of Business Brief magazine, available now at briefci.com.

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