Relight my fire – my BIBA anthem for this year

Carolyn-Callan,-Commercial-Lines-Director,-Covéa-Insurance

One of the things I really love about this industry is the close-knit community, and there’s no better event than BIBA for bringing everyone together.  For me, BIBA has always been the best place for meeting industry friends, connecting with people and relighting my fire, and that’s in a normal year. But 2020 was no normal year!

This last year, we’ve all been starved of the oxygen our interactions with people provide and worked really hard to find new ways to stay connected with everyone.  Despite the challenges, we’ve kept delivering, living up to the promises we make to our customers, day in, day out, as they too struggled with the impact of the pandemic on their health and livelihoods.  It’s been tough.

But the ability to stay connected has been a massive source of strength for me personally, and I know it has been to the broker community too.  For this I’ve got to say huge thanks to our Digital team who got us up and running working from home so fast at the start of the first lockdown, helping us stay connected to our brokers when we couldn’t meet in person.  And our Claims colleagues have been magnificent too, clarifying cover early and paying valid claims, all done remotely.  Our first business interruption claim was paid in April 2020 and over 75% were settled by the end of the year.

By maintaining our focus on doing what really matters, we were absolutely delighted that in 2020, for the third year in a row, our brokers voted us a 5* insurer partner based on our service, which I think says a lot about the resilience of our business and our priorities.  As we couldn’t enjoy the usual celebrations at the end of the year, there was no suffering with FOMO, although instead I got a bad bout of Covid-19 to kick start 2021. Thankfully, I’ve made a full recovery, but my thoughts go out to those still suffering or who have lost loved ones. It’s a cliché, but it really does make you realise what’s important.  

I think what we’ve all realised is the importance of friends, family and community, and BIBA falls square into that camp for me.  The sense of community the event instils is like no other. Even though we won’t be meeting in person again this year, thanks to some fantastic digital solutions, BIBA is back on, and we can attend from the comfort of our living rooms, spare rooms or holiday homes - mentioning no names here! It’s the opportunity to see familiar faces, make new friends and maybe even have a drink or two (or three).  The Covéa team have put their creative heads together to come up with some entertaining competitions to attract people to our virtual stand to meet our friendly team, so it’s well worth a visit. I can’t say ‘see you on stand C50’ this year, but I can say ‘see you virtually at BIBA’ which is still a thrill for me.

Building strong relationships is key to resilience, so BIBA’s theme for this year is spot on.  The event creates a rare and unique opportunity to build our resilience by nurturing relationships and making new connections, something that’s been a lifesaver over the last year and will underpin our shared success as we look to new opportunities for future growth. So relight my fire and come and say ‘hi’ this year on 12th & 13th May 2021.

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Carolyn Callan's picture

Carolyn has a proven track record of successfully growing businesses through building strong, mutually beneficial relationships and maintaining clear focus on the needs of the end customer.

Prior to joining Covéa Insurance in 2017, Carolyn led the launch, development and growth of the Commercial division at Swinton and, was responsible for business development and marketing strategy of Towergate’s SME and Advisory Broking operation.  She joined Covéa as Head of SME & Schemes and progressed to lead the Commercial Lines division, becoming Commercial Lines Director in 2019.

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