Lloyd's chairman Lord Levene was to urge in a speech Monday night to business leaders at the Philadelphia Club that the insurance industry work with regulators, people outside the industry, and corporations' top executives to show that ethical business behavior was insurers' norm.
He said the industry should eliminate conflicts of interest and increase transparency, develop and require adoption of ethical principles, communicate more effectively to those outside the industry, and work with boards of directors, CEOs, CFOs - not just risk managers - to demonstrate that managing risk seriously is a crucial element of good corporate governance.
"If we are to retain the confidence of the key player in all of this - the customer - we need full disclosure and complete transparency about who is doing what exactly, for whom, on what terms, and at precisely what cost," Lord Levene said in his prepared text.
The world's largest brokers have now taken decisive action, Lord Levene noted, abandoning the practice of contingent commissions to avoid any potential conflicts of interest.
