2016 Insurance Conference – unusual indeed!

The 24^th of July 2016 saw the CN&CO team head to Sun City to kick off the 43rd Insurance Conference of Southern Africa, entitled Business Unusual along with 1200 other passionate members of the insurance industry, representing 26 countries and around 350 companies. The conference offered a great line-up of speakers and social occasions; the opportunities to learn, contribute, have fun and make a difference were numerous.

With a collective number of 20 conferences attended between the CN&CO team, it promised to be another great couple of days for us and our clients. The twins Gianluca and Kurt headed up early for the ever important golf day on the Sunday, taking along Almero Oosthuizen from the Purple Group and Lee Astfalck who promptly put them to shame on the Gary Player course.

Amongst the various presentations on offer for the attendees were Nicolaas Kruger from Momentum, Caroline da Silva of the FSB,  Yves Morieux from Boston Consulting Group, David Williams from Willis Re, Justice Malala, Trevor Manuel, Frank Magwegwe and Mohale Ralebitsohas from the BBC, to name several. For a further description of the speakers and their topics you can view the lineup from the IISA Conference page

A highlight of weekend was CN&CO winning the best dressed award at the Bollywood Party sponsored by Altech Netstar on the Monday evening. Over 25 delegates from seven companies (Europ Assistance, ITOO, Lombard Partnerships, Livingstone Crichton, FSB, Innosys, Willis Re) in the form of current, past or future clients of CN&CO, dressed up as Kali, the Hindu Goddess of time, love, change, and power. The overall image was expertly crafted by Rikus Kok and his accomplice Cat Swart delivered a master class in dress up. 27 handmade costumes, consisting of gold pants, red sashes, innumerable accessories, and not to mention ornate headpieces were worn with style by the likes of our diverse clients. Oh and one small detail; everyone was painted blue.

The group made an immense impact at the dinner and embraced the CN&CO motto of “take what you do seriously but not yourself”. This couldn’t have been better demonstrated by the fact that upper management teams s of Insurance and software companies, lawyers, FSB regulators and more all agreed to be painted blue for the evening, in front of 1200 of their peers. Thankfully the Purple Group had sponsored Conference photographers and they captured all the festivities of the event, some of which can be seen below.

A massive congratulations and thank you must be given to Pat Hunter and her team from the IISA, the media sponsors Cover, RiskAfrica and FANews and all the behind-the-scenes support that went into making the event a success. Without all their hard work, the conference would not have been possible

Finally, to our friends in the industry, thank you for pouring your energy, personalities, time and gees into everything that you do, be it at the office, with clients or at one of many social functions. The success of the greater insurance industry is largely due to how you approach business and life, combining intelligence with creativity, hard work and an indomitable spirit to make a difference.