Insurer announces renewed sponsorship deal
NRMA Insurance will continue its sponsorship with the Western Sydney Wanderers of the A-League, it has been announced.
The insurer has backed the Wanderers since before they had a name or had chosen the colours of their now famous strip and the sponsorship has been mutually beneficial.
Not only will NRMA continue with shirt and pitch side sponsorship for the men’s team, they will also extend the sleeve and signage at women’s and youth games.
The insurer has also pledged an extra $3.7 million to help develop grassroots soccer in Western Sydney, according to
The Daily Telegraph.
The final sponsorship figure is yet to be announced but thanks to the success of the Western Sydney club, the total is expected to exceed $1 million annually.
NRMA Insurance chief executive Andy Cornish told
The Daily Telegraph that the company did not hesitate to renew the partnership and thanks to the continued success of the team, the partnership should flourish.
“When the Football Federation started talking to me, I was initially sceptical about the club because at that time they were trying to move incredibly quickly. No one could have predicted how brilliantly they’ve done.”
Chairman and owner of the Wanderers said of the deal: “We are delighted – they have been in it from day one and they have a long-term commitment to our club.”
ANZIIF scholarship winners announced
The winners and runners up of the ANZIIF TurksLegal Claims Scholarship 2014 have been announced at the NSW Annual General Insurance breakfast in Sydney.
Kevin Nhan, client manager at Instrat Insurance Brokers, has been awarded this year’s prestigious price for his essay on the duty of utmost good faith in the Australian insurance industry.
Nhan was chosen from a record number of entries and, as the winner, receives a package valued up to $8,000 including return travel, accommodation, $500 spending money and registration to the Claims Conference and Insurance Services Expo to be held in California in March next year.
Paul Angus, partner at TurksLegal and member of the scholarship’s judging panel said of Nhan’s work: “Kevin tackled a topic that is a feature of all types of insurance, although its exact scope of operation and power are still unknown some thirty years after its introduction into law.”
Nhan added: “It is an important subject given the duty of utmost good faith involves mutual obligations upon both the insurer and the insured and it endures throughout the life of the policy.”
The runner-up prize was awarded to Sharyn Sullivan, executive manager - QLD CTP Claims at
Suncorp, for her essay on the role of social media on the future of claims management.
As part of her prize, Sullivan was awarded registration to the 2015 ANZIIF Claims Convention in Australia including travel and accommodation.
Wearable technology research grant could have insurance affect
The University of New South Wales has been awarded a grant of over $300,000 to develop secure, wearable technology that could be used to feed information to insurers.
The grant, handed down from the Australian Research Council, will be spread over three years beginning in 2015 as engineers hope to make devices that are secure and trusted enough to be used to collect data for insurers and the mainstream health system.
With the prevalence of wearable technology such as FitBit and Nike+, the wearable space is set to become a key part of the future of insurance.
Professor Sanjay Jha, director of cyber security and privacy laboratory at the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW sees a huge growth space in the wearable sector but understands that security and reliable data are paramount.
“If healthcare professionals and medical insurers are to trust the data coming from wearable devices, they also need to be confident that the provenance, namely the context – the person, time and place associated with the data – is genuine, that the device integrity has not been compromised by malware, and that the data has not been tampered in transit or storage.”
It is hoped that the developed technology can be used with existing devices to encrypt information and allow insurers a greater insight into their consumers which could help to lower premiums.
