CEO Corner – Summer 2016

These last few months have been a whirlwind of activity with the end of year state events, member research, the well attended AGM and highly successful ALUCA conference held in Adelaide in October with such great positive feedback from all of those who attended.  Thank you to all involved. You can see some of the highlights in this edition of RiskeBusiness.

We’ve included the 2016 AGM reports from Jim and myself later in RiskeBusiness which sets out what has been achieved this year- and as you’ll see there is so much to be proud of as a volunteer member-based organisation and what has collectively been achieved in 2016.

I anchored my report around each of our 5 key strategic pillars – Member engagement, Stakeholder value, Thought leadership, Professional development and Sustainability.  For a member based organisation, members are our life blood and our reason for being so Member engagement is critical. We want to really get to know our members, their needs and wants to ensure we remain relevant and are adding value. Research has and is being conducted. So please make sure you provide your input before we close this off soon. Here’s the link

Membership growth is strong.  We also continue to recognise and reward members via a number of valued awards/scholarships. The 2 highly regarded recipients of ALUCA’s prestigious life memberships in 2016 were Tony O’Leary, G & T Risk Management and Brian Sussman, RGA- well done to them.

Creating ongoing stakeholder and sponsor value is very important. We will continue to forge strong partnerships and undertake research to ensure we better understand our partners needs to help them achieve their objectives. A huge thanks to them all as without their support we would not be able to provide such an array of services around Australia.

Thought leadership and representation is an area we really want to focus on and shine the light on the great work and value that life insurance professionals provide.  We want to dig up industry good news stories and statistics/figures to back these up. We’ll be doing more of this in RiskeBusiness.

Professional development is another key plank in our strategy and one that reinforces the member value proposition.  ALUCA’s commitment to continuous professional development (CPD) is aimed at raising the professional standards of underwriting and claims. We are in the process of evolving and refining our current accreditation scheme and have an education working party finalising a high level life insurance competency framework and our updated accreditation model will be a part of this.

Sustainability is around ensuring strong governance, ethics and managing ALUCA responsibly as well as being open and transparent. This is an important plank and one that we are 110% committed to.

If you don’t get a chance to read the full report please look at the full schedule of activities for 2016 available to all ALUCA members.  I hope you’ll all feel as proud of this as we do – in large part due to the hard working sub-committee and working groups, the Board, our Secretariat Officer Pat Chew, former EO, John O’Leary and RiskeBusiness editor Michael Reid – well done & thanks to them all.

We are on a transformational journey.  So buckle up and prepare for a great ride as 2017 is shaping up to be an even greater year than the last one with many new initiatives planned plus the much needed refresh and update of the website due by the middle of the year. To ensure you don’t miss out on these remember to renew your membership before December 31st.

Finally, a huge thanks again to all of the many people who go into making ALUCA what it is today and what it will be tomorrow. Thank you. It’s so very heartening to see so many of you interested in ALUCA and it’s ongoing success.  I am really thrilled to be part of this vibrant organisation. I’d like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very safe and happy holiday season – hope it’s full of much happiness, laughter and love. Look forward to seeing you in 2017.

Warm regards,

Amanda McKernan
ALUCA CEO
ceo@aluca.com.au
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