Angela Rumbold played a key role in raising the profile of insurance in Parliament

On reading that former Tory minister Dame Angela Rumbold has died, aged 77, my mind was taken back over a quarter of a century to the early 1980s when she played a part in helping raise the profile of the insurance industry in Parliament.
This was in the early days of broker registration and the British Insurance Brokers' Association which had been formed by the merger of four predecessor trade bodies. These had come together to promote broker registration and represent those intermediaries who submitted to the voluntary scheme. There were, however, some intermediaries who felt the scheme offered little more than protection of the broker name and they formed a rival body called the Institute of Insurance Consultants in the early 1980s.
The IIC had a fractious first couple of years but eventually settled down under the leadership of the colourful Ken Sangster. Seeing that BIBA gained alot of its publicity and favorable press through its Parliamentary spokesman, the late Sir Robert McCrindle, Ken recruited his own local MP, the recently elected Angela Rumbold, to do a similar job for the IIC. She worked hard at the role, speaking at many IIC events and raising some of their concerns in Parliament but she was a rising star and by 1986 was a minister which meant she had to relinquish the IIC role.
The IIC quickly diasppeared into obscurity after that, especially with the emergence of the dynamic Andrew Paddick and his Institute of Insurance Brokers to challenge the dominance of BIBA.

21 Jun 2010