Recovery will require positivity and partnership as FIDUCIA announces 3 new hires to its team…..

If you read the media then there is little to be positive about in the current environment as COVID-19 impacts our industry and its clients.

None of us could have envisaged how 2020 would evolve and the significant challenges that it would pose. Indeed, it has tested the market’s ability to respond to a level that can truly be described as a Black Swan event.

Thankfully at Fiducia we have been able, not only to continue to operate effectively, but also continue to build our business at a time when some of our peers have had some very difficult decisions to make.

The withdrawal of capacity from some areas of the UK marine market has only been exacerbated by the economic impact of COVID-19

It is often said that challenge creates opportunity and at Fiducia we were determined to remain positive and find the opportunities that we firmly believed were still there.

Part and parcel of that strategy was to ensure that we were there to support our broker partners and their clients.
While a move to remote working to ensure social distancing was enforced in March, we did not furlough any staff as we were aware that recent months would see our brokers and clients tested as never before and we were determined to be there when we were needed.

We have also been working with our capacity providers to look to potential new facilities and seek to adapt or extend our existing facilities to reflect the changing needs of the clients.

It has resulted in a new extension to our current terrorism policy to reflect the growing threat of NBCR.
I am delighted to announce that we have also strengthened our team in recent weeks, with three significant hires.

We have appointed Scot Dowson to our already strong and experienced underwriting team.

Scot was previously Regional Manager at NMU based in Leeds. He joined the company in 2001 becoming a cargo underwriter before taking the Regional Manager role in 2018. Scot has built up a significant amount of expertise across the marine classes during his career along with a huge range of contacts with brokers and clients. He understands Fiducia’s client-first culture and we are excited for what he will bring to the team.

What the recruitment of Scot, Claire Kilbane and Ben Warburton allows us to do is enhance the range of the products and support we can offer. Scot joins us with an impressive contact book and we are looking forward to supporting Scot in strengthening those relationships and the opportunity to highlight to those contacts the benefits that working with Fiducia can bring.

We believe we have been able to show that our ability to support our broker partners and their clients has not been impacted by COVID-19. The needs of policyholders have changed but we are keen to work with our broker partners to ensure that we have the covers available that reflect those changes and will meet their current and future needs.

At a time when the industry has been placed under extreme pressure we are delighted that we can provide a positive example of how the strength of relationships, and the maintenance of a ‘can do’ attitude can benefit, brokers clients and underwriters alike.

There is little doubt that the challenges that COVID-19 present to our businesses are not over but we have worked hard to position ourselves to ensure that we are ready willing and most importantly able to play our part in finding the solutions for your clients.