Craig Simpson for MAS Business Risk Advice team

Speaker: Craig Simpson, Head of Business Advice, MAS

Craig Simpson: Business insurance is arguably the cornerstone of the product lines at MAS. It ensures that businesses can continue to operate after an event or a claimable event occurring with the business. And it also ensures that there is an income stream, which is able to fund the purchasing of assets, personal assets like homes, cars and toys that our Members enjoy as a result of the hard work that they put in through their businesses. We also employ a number of staff within the businesses that we insure, and many of these staff are insured with MAS as well. So without the businesses, you know these employees do not have a livelihood, and as such aren't able to build up wealth and assets in the process. So, yeah, it's a critical product line within MAS, and it's essential in order to protect the assets of our of our Members, as well as the staff that work in those businesses.

Craig Simpson: One of the reasons why we've decided to develop a broker model is to ensure that we can say yes more often to our Members. So, often in the past we were unable to assist a Member when they came to us with a business that they were investing in with their spare cash, like a winery or a barbershop. And we just didn't have the capacity from a policy wording point of view to ensure these types of assets. A good example is the cyber risks and management liability that we passed on to a third party broker. So, our Members had to then deal with 2 separate, companies in order to get the full extent of covers required for their business, which is not ideal. And the broker model will allow us to move these, covers and bundle them together as one. They would have one source of contact through MAS and we have massive access now to all sorts of products. Whether it be locally in New Zealand, or if we can't find the cover locally, we would able to be able to find it in Australia with one of the Australian insurers, or even go further afield and insure these assets with the Lloyds of London. So, it just opens up a whole new world for us as a business. But the main thing is that we will be able to say yes more often to our Members.

Craig Simpson: This week I'll introduce to you, Andy Williams and Rajnil Maharaj. Andy, as you know, many of you know, has been with MAS for over 20 years. I would consider him to be another grandfather of the BR team. Been around, knows most of the Members that are in the Auckland area and has probably been part of putting those Members on the BR book over the years. Andy brings a lot of skill in terms of understanding how MAS operates and how our core business Members operate. He's been involved in some in some really unusual, placements over the years and has been successful in what he does. Rajnil comes all the way from Fiji and has been in New Zealand for over a year now. He's got a lot of experience in the banking and financial sector, both in Fiji, as well as New Zealand, and brings a lot of experience and skill in terms of quality assurance and distribution of products.