Get to Know Your Council - October Release

Name: Peter Garnham

Occupation/Industry Experience

My career start was with the (then) Norwich Union at Head Office, fire and business interruption underwriting. After branch experience, concluding with a period as a general new business inspector, I moved into the world of loss adjusting in 1974. In 1990 I resigned as an Associate Director of that major international company to set up my own independent partnership, with others. Thereafter was involved in UK and international adjusting work. In 2005 I became a director of a chartered loss adjusting firm acting for commercial policyholders on claim presentation.

In 2010 I took on a consultancy post with adjusters Cunningham Lindsey (now Sedgewick), dealing with major losses. I retired from that full time work in 2016.

So far as professional qualifications are concerned, I was elevated to FCII in 1974 and Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters in 1983.

How long have you been on the Insurance Institute of Norwich’s Council?

Frankly, I can’t exactly remember but probably since the late 1970s or early 1980s. I had a first election to the Presidency in 1987 followed by reprises in 1996 and 2009. I stayed on the Council between-times, either as an elected member or automatically as a Vice President. In 2010 the Council proposed that I accept the role of Life Vice President; this now provides a non-voting position with which I retain an entirely enjoyable contact with the Council (providing some continuity input without any level of responsibility!).

I can now be regarded as an official superannuated fossil.

What is your role, and what does it involve?

The involvement that I have now could best be described as ‘without portfolio’. I guess it’s one of ‘an old head’ assisting a great bunch of (much) younger enthusiastic members carrying out some terrific work on behalf of the membership.

Why did you decide to join the Council?

I’d been a member of Leicester Institute Council before returning to Norwich and really enjoyed the opportunity to help the professional community in its educational and social work across all parts of the insurance world. It was a ‘no brainer’ to join when my membership was transferred to Norwich.

What are you most looking forward in the forthcoming year on the Council?

The dreaded Covid has kiboshed so much of the social ways of carrying out the Institute’s activities for the time being. On the positive side it has forced re-thinks on ways of doing stuff, to good effect, but the opportunity to re-introduce some face-to-face interaction, in both the business and social activities of the Institute at large and the Council itself, will be really welcomed.

Tell us one unusual fact about yourself

I hold the 220 yards sprint record at Diss Grammar School from 1965. (A few years later the athletics events were changed to metric measurements, then they demolished the school!).

In 1983 won a Ploughing Association Drawing Match (to plough a straight furrow of about 80 yards) with a deflection recorded as one-sixteenth of an inch – pure fluke!