Q&A: CILA president and Crawford chief ethics officer Shaun Kelly

What has it been like taking over as president of CILA during the pandemic?

It is a remarkable honour [to be CILA president]; the young lad who looked like he’d left a paper bag behind the phone box outside the Thomas Howell office in the 1980s never thought that this would happen. So it is remarkable from that point of view. And it is very, very special.

In terms of taking over from [predecessor McLarens chief commercial officer] Graham [Smart], he and I have worked very closely over the past 12 months with me as deputy and him as president; working very much hand in hand. Graham is a very collaborative person and it is almost twee to say it but this is very much a team effort involving the executive committee, council and secretariat ably led by [executive director] Malcolm [Hyde] and [marketing manager] Alison [Gamble].

It was strange annual general meeting as at it normally follows the conference; but this year it was a virtual event with Graham, me, [deputy president and Criterion head of specialist services] Helena Evans and Alison in our largest meeting room in London with everybody watching online around the world. Which is quite nice as the AGM is usually held in a room in a hotel, latterly in Nottingham. But we had plaudits from people in Australia and other places saying it was the first time they had been able to vote for as long as they could remember. And I’m really keen that whatever we do around the AGM in the future – which will remain a physical event – we need to find a way of merging it with an element of virtual so they can continue to take part. Which makes it more inclusive.

It was also unusual in that the president usually does the conference and then hands over to me; but this year the conference followed the AGM so Graham and I shared the welcoming remarks.

To what extent has Covid-19 changed your own plans for the next 12 months?

Usually [the president] is a social role and gets out and about. We have specialist interest groups that have a couple of meetings a year and the intention is that the president physically goes to those meetings and frankly buys a drink afterwards, which offers an opportunity to have a less formal interaction with people.

But what has been unusual this year is that Graham had a normal six months having started the gig in September, had the lunch in October and then he did the various events and SIGs up and until March and then it stopped. In fact our last physical council meeting was two days before I was put in lockdown.

So he had a compromised final six months, and I think I am going to have a compromised first six months, at least. And the annual lunch has been postponed until March and I am a bit skeptical whether that might happen. There have been discussion about whether we move it to June. But if it is not June it is not going to happen next year which I’ll be sad about because I’ll be the first president in God knows how many years that has not had an annual lunch or dinner.

The [October] conference worked virtually and we will try and do an element of that again as we had members from all over the world saying thank you because they were able to attend. And we had some members in Trinidad and Tobago who did a session on cat adjusting; and it is really unusual for us to have a session on cat adjusting from anyone other than Brits telling you what their experience has been in the Caribbean. But actually having people from the Caribbean talking about cat adjusting first hand was interesting.

How have CILA and its members responded to the challenges of Covid-19?

The sector has had challenges, but you would expect me to say they have responded really, really well. Certainly adjusters have risen to the challenges of the pandemic. And we will continue to do so. We have proven our resilience, expertise and frankly innovation.

When I was an adjuster doing a proper job some 20 years ago I was branch-based but there is a decent percentage of adjusters that have not been branch based for a while, and are therefore used to remote working, video collaboration, using online platforms and apps. I did not have a mobile phone when I started in adjusting and there was no such thing as sat nav.

And now we are all used to these things and what has happened is whilst there might have been reluctance on the part of some brokers and insurers to embrace [these things]; they now realise they need too. It is like a lot of these things in that it has advanced. We were not really using Teams six or seven months ago, but we are now.

But we are still doing visits [at Crawford], and I am sure all the loss adjusting firms are doing them. We are just doing less of them and following an assessment of the risk we pose to the person we are visiting - and risk to us - so we are doing it sensibly.

CILA continues to be the voice of its members and we continue to engage with the Association of British Insurers, Financial Conduct Authority, Health and Safety Executive, The Home Office, Treasury etc. And also help people do their examinations.

We have moved the exams to be virtual and that has been really successful. We have had 400 examinations completed this year, which is on a par with what would be normal. The numbers are remaining static and there is a reasonable number of people coming through who have taken the opportunity [to do them] because they are travelling less.

Something else that has been powerful is the e-mentoring programme to enable people to mentor others, and not just from an examination point of view but around the skills they need to be an adjuster and beyond. 

What initiatives from previous presidents are you looking to build on and develop during the next year?

Things like [diversity & inclusion] are included in the [CILA] Charter. Events in the US and elsewhere have brought that into focus during 2020 and Graham raised it as one of his themes last year but I will continue with that as it is not something you do for one year and it is really important to me.

We revised the D&I statement on the CILA website a couple of months ago and I smiled as it had not been revised since it was first put in there. But it was very reactive in the past [talking] about where we find discrimination we’ll root it out, to now where we say we’ll absolutely promote it.

We have to recognise that CILA isn’t the recruiter of adjusters, it is the individual firms; but we should do everything we can do to promote Cila to a far more diverse group.

And we know Women in CILA has been successful, led by Candy Holland. When I joined there was one female adjuster in my firm and now I have no idea how many there are in Crawford. But I know there are an awful lot and that is repeated across the sector. And this year approaching 50% of the people who have qualified as chartered adjusters are women.

But we need to do more; and I don’t want to just concentrate on the Women in CILA piece. We need to do more because if you look at accountancy most of the people qualifying are women. But D&I is not just about women, it is about diversity across the spectrum. We don’t currently ask about the diversity of our members, but we are starting to think about that. Because it is really important.

Someone recently asked me when CILA would have a president born in the 1980s rather than the 1960s or 1970s and my hope is we will soon have someone who is born in the 1990s. Age should be no barrier. I have a direct report in Australia who was born in the 1990s and they are perfectly capable of taking my role, but don’t tell them that. And they would be an able CILA president.”

But the CILA president has tended to be a man somewhere in their 50s. Fortunately the best candidate a few years ago was Candy, and my deputy is Helena Evans. And what pleased me when the agenda came through for the CILA AGM and I looked at the officer nominations. Of the five, and I had not thought about it, three of them were women. And also pleasing from a spectrum of diversity is that none of them are based in London. Which was pleasing and not deliberate. There has been no positive discrimination. They were the best people for the role.

How would you describe your own theme for your term as president?

I want to really push home the value proposition of loss adjusters. And I think our value proposition is our knowledge experience qualification and impartiality. Sometimes that is lost. But the professional and ethical standards are really important to me. I never had an aspiration to be the CEO of an adjusting firm. But actually I am a chief ethics officer so I am a CEO, but not the CEO.

So ethics are really important to and so I am keen during my year I want to try as much as possible to promote those ethical and professional standards of adjusters because I think it is really key.

It is interesting that within the adjusting profession we have compliance and ethical roles. And I want to promote the fact we are a profession and an added value proposition.

CILA is looking to update its charter and by-laws to better reflect the evolution of the adjusting profession; can you give any more details about this?

They are with the Privy Council [at the moment] so I can’t give you too much detail because it would be inappropriate to give you more than the members. But they will be presented to an extraordinary general meeting hopefully in the next few weeks and I am expecting those to go through.

They [have already been] presented to the Council of CILA and there wasn’t a dissenting voice, once they were explained clearly to them. [They] include changes to help make us more diverse, not least about who can qualify. Currently you can work really hard in an African country, pass the examinations but because you do not work for a Chartered firm of loss adjusters you can’t become a chartered loss adjuster; you can only become a certified loss adjuster, so we are doing things to help around that.

And I mentioned Candy, she is now retired, but she could have mentored somebody within her [former employer Echelon] but they could never become chartered because they were not a chartered firm and that is not inclusive at all. So we are looking to change that.

How have you modernised the Guide to Professional Conduct?

That was revised six months ago and I had a hand in that. We halved the number of pages and simplified the text. I come from a place where I used to write policies for a living and soon realised that less is more. It is now more principal-based, has less words, and is more modern.

I could even help encourage people into the profession. In that if they went on to the CILA website and looked at some of the documents and see them as staid they won’t come into adjusting. Whereas if they look and see a fresh and succinct guide to professional conduct, hopefully they will.

CILA celebrates its 60^th birthday next year, what plans do you have to celebrate? 

We have our 60^th anniversary on 22 December 2021. The term loss adjuster was first coined in 1941 during Wold War 2, but we got the Charter in 1961. We want to celebrate but at the moment it is very difficult to plan for it. But it is a notable event and significant milestone.