President's Message

The year marked our centenary as a Local Institute and we celebrated in style, with many past Presidents in attendance at the first Annual Dinner since March 2019, owing to the Covid 19 Pandemic, in June 2022. The event was a great success and the fund raising for our 2 charity partners Amelia’s Rainbow and the Insurance Charities made me particularly proud. Thanks to all those who helped raise awareness and sponsorship, sell event tickets and raffle tickets and make the Kings and Queens so much fun and so lucrative for the charities.

My first year as President also saw us have a 2nd Annual Dinner! (Is there a theme here?) as we recently held our 2023 event, once again at AFC Bournemouth, on 24^th March 2023. The commitment and drive of the Dinner Committee (Sue Lloyd, Shirley Reeves, Jana Langdown, Chris Mills and Paul Dyer) helped to ensure that the event was better attended, the funds raised for charity greater and the (already high) bar set in June 2022 was raised further. My thanks to the Dinner Committee and Stephen Linklater and Paul Dyer (again) for the Kings & Queens.

In addition to the fund raising at the Annual Dinners we had a successful Golf Day raising more funds at Dudsbury Golf Club in June 2022, which will be repeated this June on the 22^nd, again at Dudsbury, details on our website events page. We do hope you can come and support us! Thanks to Alan Boyce, Charities representative, Sue Lloyd and co for organising.

It’s been a very good year for CPD events too, with successful face-to-face events at the RNLI HQ in Poole and a ‘Mock Trial’ in March at Dudsbury Golf Club, this complementing the many excellent online CPD events provided by us, the Local Institute network and Hants & Dorset PFS, with whom we work very closely. My thanks to Shirley Reeves for looking after our busy programme, so superbly.

Peter Read and his willing volunteers within the Council have given presentations and attended careers fairs at various schools to promote Education and Careers in the area, whilst all the time balancing our books, thank you Peter.

Likewise, my Deputy President Jana Langdown has been doing a great job ensuring CPD events and how we work as a Council promotes Equality & Diversity as it should.

The year has somewhat been overshadowed by the headline grabbing dispute between the Chartered Insurance Institute board and the Board of the PFS, which we hope is now heading towards better understanding between the 2 boards and a workable resolution. We are fortunate to have 4 PFS professionals on the IIB council and we made sure that the interests and concerns of our 672 PFS members were voiced and understood by the CII board.

With gratitude and a little sadness we will be saying goodbye to a stalwart of the Council, eager volunteer for pretty much everything and President through the Covid years Paul Dyer. Thanks for everything Paul, you will definitely be missed. And thanks to Shirley Reeves to agreeing to stepping into Paul’s shoes on the Regional Forum.

In addition, another stalwart of the council, past President, past Treasurer, current Charities representative and all round good guy, with extensive, experience, knowledge and wisdom, Alan Boyce has announced that he will be stepping down next year. Here’s looking forward to a great final year with Alan.

This year we were pleased to welcome Rachael Martin (a recently qualified PFS Fellow amongst other things) to the council, promoting and championing Next Generation activities and supporting Education and Careers. I gather that some further new recruits have been speaking with Jana and are keen to join us on the Council, so lots to look forward to.

Assuming the membership agree, I look forward to another year as President, hoping to build on what we have achieved already and leave it in good shape for Jana to take on next year.

Chris Bibb ACII, FPFS, Certs CII (MP&ER), Certs PFS (DM&Securities)

Chartered Financial Planner

President