Late Summer Newsletter 23.8.23

This year has continued to provide us with challenges and there are still uncertain times ahead.

We advised our members and the local market at our Annual Dinner in March and again at our Quiz in July that circumstances have changed for some of our council members, meaning that they are no longer able to be as actively involved as in the past. The remaining council members are doing all that they can but are managing their own workload challenges that have continued post-Covid, restricting time and capacity for institute matters.

We said in March and July that to continue operating and providing CPD, educational, social and networking services to our members and the insurance and financial services community within our institute area, which geographically is very large covering the counties of Berkshire, Oxfordshire, most of Wiltshire, South Buckinghamshire and North Hampshire and part of Middlesex, that we need MORE COUNCIL MEMBERS who can be ACTIVELY involved.

So far we have not had any response from our members or the businesses within our institute area despite verbal promises made at the Dinner.

The CII will do all that they can to support us in September to recruit new council members.

Despite our limited council member numbers and capacity, we have continued to deliver our own usual full CPD webinar and face to face programme in 2022-23 as well as working with our Southern regional neighbouring local institutes on a regional programme of events. As well as our 90th Annual dinner in March, our events included:

• Our first Charity Quiz since before lockdown in July supporting our President's two charities Earth Trust and Parkinson's UK, raising £263.75 for each charity on the night.

• Presentations with both charities in July finalising our fundraising with each- photographs and details of the total funds raised will follow in September.

• We also continued to support The Insurance Charities and raised £1069 to date in 2022-23 and are due to make a further donation from the funds raised by our 150 Club members.

• Our 19th Annual Golf Day, sponsored once again by Dual Oliva and Cliff Browne, in June raised £796.14 for the Motor Neurone Disease Association as always in memory of our colleague Andrew Bickerton. Our thanks and appreciation go to all those who took part and particularly to Cliff and the team from Dual Oliva.
• On 1st September, in response to member demand, we have an online M92 revision course for our members with Alan Chandler which we are hosting in partnership with Bournemouth Institute.

Next year will be the 20th year of the Golf Day tournament, since setting up the event in memory of Andrew Bickerton and raising funds for MNDA. MNDA has said it will help us in any way it can to make it a special event. It was decided that even if the local institute does not continue we will run this as a local insurance community event with continued support from Cliff and Dual Oliva.

BUT we would really like the Insurance Institute of Reading to continue beyond its 103rd year and provide services for our members and community as it has for so many years and possibly hold our 91st Annual Dinner in March 2024.

TO DO SO, WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT!

We need members of Reading Institute, who are actively working in the insurance or financial services market, you don't have to be qualified and we are particularly keen for new entrants and our Next Generation (under age 35) members to get involved in council.

We hold around 9 meetings a year which are hybrid so you can choose to attend in person or via a virtual link. We need members who can step up and help us run our face to face events during the working day and our dinner and quizzes etc. in the evenings. The more members we have on council, the lighter the load shared.

If you are interested, please contact us AFTER 15th September via our email address admin@ciireading.co.uk and we will be happy to discuss how to get involved.

Or how about joining a council meeting to get an idea of what being a council member is like? Let us know if you would like to attend our next meeting at the end of/beginning of October as a guest observer and we can arrange this.

WE ARE CLOSED FROM 29th AUGUST to 15th SEPTEMBER INCLUSIVE for a late summer holiday. Emails and phone calls will not be responded to by the Admin office during that time.