Farewell to a great Briton

Andrew Paddick was a man who simply could not be ignored. He was brash, passionate, out-spoken and often ferociously single-minded. But he was also very astute, had a sharp analytical mind and a frequently under-estimated eye for detail, all of which he often used to wrong foot those acting against the interests of the brokers he represented. He was also incredibly loyal and many repaid him richly in kind over the years.

Andrew was by no means unknown in the market when he launched the Institute of Insurance Brokers in 1987. He had a reputation as a tenacious and creative broker, headed a business based in Wellingborough and was a founder member of the British Insurance Brokers' Association.

Eager for change

Like many in the provincial broking market, he had high hopes for Biba and the Insurance Brokers Registration Council but, by the end of 1986, he was starting to feel disillusioned. Biba had picked up the unwanted, but probably not unwarranted, tag of being the 'Big Insurance Brokers' Association' and broker registration - just five years old - was under threat from a new regulatory regime.

The Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulating Association, created in the wake of the first Financial Services Act, was set to sweep-up general insurance brokers - along with everything else implied by its cumbersome title. This was too much for Andrew, who wanted to keep brokers out of Fimbra's clutches by getting the IBRC recognised, professional body status under the Act.

To cut a long story short, Biba made a perfunctory attempt to achieve this, got a rebuff from the Treasury and told a very unhappy Andrew to try himself if he thought he could do better. The result: at the end of March 1987 he was sitting in Post's Fleet Street offices telling us about his plans for the IIB.

Week-by-week we reported its phenomenal growth as hundreds of brokers joined up - and just two months later it held its first conference in Telford. This was a man on a mission. Andrew seized every opportunity to promote his new organisation and its campaign for IBRC brokers to be exempt from joining Fimbra. The week after his first conference, John Greenway, himself a broker, was elected as Conservative MP for Ryedale and was signed up to the cause.

Post was still not entirely convinced that he would succeed with his crusade. At the end of August 1987, we wrote: "It is never easy to predict the outcome of such debates but the smart money will be on the moves to raise the IBRC to professional body status failing."

By early December that year, Sir Kenneth Berrill, chairman of the Securities and Investments Board, acknowledged the strength of the argument and IBRC brokers were freed from Fimbra's regulatory hold. The IIB's thousand or so member firms rejoiced and the new association's future was assured.

But like many famous victories this one was not without its casualties. The battle with Biba had become very bitter and, in truth, never really healed over the next 20 years. But Andrew did not care about ruffling feathers. As Garry Heath, with whom Andrew worked to set up a similar body in the independent financial adviser market, said this week: "He was the original anti-suit. He took on big, established interests in a way that unnerved them."

In the early days of the IIB he developed a penchant for dressing up to make his point; appearing outside the Halifax Building Society as Manuel from Fawlty Towers to send-up its TV advertising campaign and later as Montgomery at the launch of Broker Direct, another success achieved against the odds. He was a great showman, never more so than at those early Broker Direct meetings where he held forth before 1000 brokers about the evils of Direct Line and its ilk.

There were many other campaigns over the years: General Accident's free motor insurance and the General Insurance Standards Council were just two of the more prominent plus innumerable victories over the crucial detail of regulation. As Mr Heath points out: "He shone a light in many dark corners and was always determined to promote public debate."

A broker watchdog

Andrew always sought new battles and Barbara Bradshaw, who worked with him at the IIB for 20 years, fondly recalls: "He was always on the lookout for things that threatened his members. He would go through things over and over again. He never seemed to stop. Often he would phone me in the middle of the night with a new idea that he just had to share with someone."

Barbara adds that she often did not agree with him; it would be almost impossible to expect anyone to agree with Andrew's trenchant views on everything under the sun. But he never held that against anyone as Mike Williams, chief executive of Biba for almost 10 years, found: "It is fair to say it was perceived that we had a pretty frosty relationship in the early days; we crossed swords quite often and quite publicly but privately we got on very well. You knew exactly where you were with Andrew and I was always full of admiration for what he achieved." Mr Heath goes further: "He ensured pluralism in the market. Without him the small to medium-sized broker would not have survived."

Andrew will also be remembered as a huge, generous personality. He was a very British, almost eccentric, individual. David Bland, former director general of the Chartered Insurance Institute, sums it up well: "P G Wodehouse might have invented him but he made a better job of it for himself." He also made a better job of championing the small broker than anyone else could ever have done; Andrew worked tirelessly in their cause and they will be forever in his debt.