Hello, I'm John Kitson, and this is my blog.

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Transcript

Janice – “Hi everyone. Just sitting here reflecting on what a difference a year makes, so this time last year we were gearing up to become Aviva. Now it seems we’ve been Aviva forever. I’m just fresh from the BIBA conference, where we had a fantastic time with the buzz around our stand, the feedback from brokers and the way they are feeling about Aviva at the moment is fantastic and again what a difference a year makes.”

John – We started, we started, sorry I started this blog with a little group of friends about a year ago and to start off the New Year 2010 we thought we’d do a little video blog as a one off, see how it goes and if its popular I think we’ll run it again, but this is the first sort of video blog we have done and we hope you like it.

What were your highlights of 2009?

Janice – One was being asked to dress as a mermaid, one of John’s wonderful ideas, which was Janice should dress as a mermaid for the key partner conference.

John interrupts – sorry Janice we are doing highlights

*Janice laughs and slaps John’s hand*

*Clip of Janice as a mermaid*

Janice – so yeah, one of them was being asked to be a mermaid.

John interrupts – that was – it was very funny

Janice – the highlight…

At this time of the year, my job becomes more of a trial of endurance and recovery than the nuts and bolts of everyday trading. Everyone has a party and you can trip from bar to restaurant to bar in the City from noon till midnight, often rubbing shoulders with the same brokers and competitors, all taking their turns to host and be hosted.

Driving down to Birmingham after attending a family funeral on a wet and dark Friday night last week, I wasn’t really feeling or expecting too much from the evening ahead at the Insurance Times Awards.

It’s mid year appraisal time, as you can imagine appraisals with John are a bit different, mine went something like this

John: Looking back on the last 6 months what are the headlines

Me: Well relationships with consolidators seem to be a continued  theme, have we fallen out with them, are we making friends with them, even when nothing’s happening it’s forever in the headlines……

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In the… day… week… month…… and year ahead…………………
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The yellow and blue bunting will have faded in the sun…

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The yellow balloons will be long popped…………………

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The yellow cup cakes will be a distant memory………

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The yellow serviettes at the “scattered round the country” barbecues will have been forgotten ………

Over 200 years, any insurance company is bound to have a few bizarre claims to investigate. We dug into the archives and found some extraordinary claims.

Famous Norwich Union employees. Some surprising colleagues from the archives…

Ever wondered what your regular Norwich Union contacts do outside work? It turns out we’ve got quite a record of celebrity employees.

Norwich Union’s star-studded customer list. Who’s keeping your customers company on our books?

I discovered a few illustrious policyholders as I dug around in our 200 years’ worth of archives – so your clients are in good company. Churchill was a little worried about getting hurt in the army, and Newton seems to have been very aware of the physics of fire…

Insurance has been around for a lot longer than your customers might think. I’ve gone back to the start of it all – and picked out a few choice nuggets from Norwich Union’s 212-year history on the way.