Penny Black's insurance week
Penny is always fascinated by quirky Lloyd’s policies – Heidi Klum’s legs are insured for $2m, Bruce Springsteen’s vocal cords are covered for $5.5m and Jeff Beck’s fingers are underwritten to the tune of $10m, to name but a few.
So on meeting former England cricket captain Andrew Strauss, there was one logical question to ask him – but, unfortunately, the softly spoken Strauss hadn’t taken out special cover on his most valuable body parts, and didn’t seem to think he would be worth too much. He joked: “If I did my hands they’d only be worth about £12.50.”
Meanwhile, when the time came for LAS Claims to rebrand its specialist surveying business Waylett, Penny hears group boss Darren Cooper had a plan in mind. The business marked out different divisions with different colours of the LAS logo, and Cooper decided Waylett would take a particular hue – claret, in fact, to match the strip of his beloved Aston Villa. Business development manager Ian Hogarth was miffed to see his own suggestion of Middlesbrough red ignored. Frankly, Penny believes you can’t go far wrong with black – it was very much in vogue in one’s 1840s heyday and, 173 years later, it remains classically chic.
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