Kingfisher

At the time, Kingfisher was a retailer whose 73 thousand employees served 12 million customers per week through over two thousand stores primarily in the UK and France.  Its major brands included Woolworths, Darty, Comet and B&Q.

Risk Management Executive

Reporting to the Finance Director, I had plc responsibility for the group’s insurance-related financial services businesses as well as managing the group’s cost of risk of over £40m per year.  These tasks included responsibility for two group insurance companies with combined profitability of over £20m.

Key Achievements:

• Rationalised the group’s insurance financial services business, including closing the Bermuda branch of their Curaçao company, and incorporating a new company in Dublin, of which I was a director.
• Installed an integrated risk management information system, which included the facility for developing and analysing self-assessment questionnaires.  It provided quality information at an overall reduced administrative cost, and its use resulted in a materially reduced exposure base evidenced by a decline in incidents, estimated to save £2-3m per annum.
• Represented both AIRMIC (the insurance/risk management professional body) and the British Retail Consortium re UK Terrorism Insurance issues, lobbying Pool Re, the ABI, the DTI, and the Government Minister responsible, contributing to the various revisions to the scheme.