Press Releases

Fortis strengthens team with new Head of Operations

Fortis (Insurance, UK) has appointed Gary Lobb to the position of Head of Operations - Household and Travel claims, reporting to the Claims and Operations Director, Rob Smale.  This newly created role will focus on leading an award-winning¹ household and travel claims team of over 200 staff, ensuring efficient and effective management of the household and travel claims operation and dealing with over 250,000 claims per annum. 

Gary joins Fortis from Allianz where he was a senior claims manager, responsible for operational delivery of five UK claims locations, including divisional budget control, performance management, training, customer relations and resource management.  In a previous role with Capita Insurance Services, Gary held the position of Claims Operations Manager, with responsibility for leading a property claims department of 40 staff, managing outsourced contracts for large UK insurers and clients.

Commenting on his appointment, Gary Lobb said: "Fortis is clearly the market leader in claims management within the insurance industry and I am really pleased to have the opportunity to work with such a successful company. I have been impressed by the commitment of the team in the delivery of service excellence and look forward to working with them to further strengthen Fortis' proposition within the market place."

Claims and Operations Director Director, Rob Smale, comments: "I am delighted that Gary has joined us at Fortis.  He has an impressive background in the insurance industry and in managing claims operations within fast moving environments. We are committed to delivering excellent service and I firmly believe Gary's extensive experience will be instrumental in delivering this to our customers by continuing to develop our claims operations efficiency." 

Over the past few years Fortis has developed the ‘Fortis Claims and Operations Way'. This is about putting the customer at the centre of its processes and creating as hassle free, efficient and satisfying service as possible, which has led to the insurer being nominated in the top quartile for service by both brokers and customers, ranked the most efficient insurer for handling household claims², and has also led to a number of significant brands choosing to work with Fortis, including Tesco, Toyota and the Post Office.

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Notes to editors:

¹British Insurance Awards 2008: Claims Initiative of the Year. ifs Financial Innovation Awards 2009 finalist: Most Efficient Operations Management Initiative - Claims and Operations Way

² Broker nominated surveys:

• Professional Broking Sentiments Survey - top for personal lines claims (May 2009)
• Insurance Age Annual Broker Survey - top insurer for service (May 2009)
• Institute of Insurance Brokers - top for service (April 2009).

Customer surveys:

• A survey compiled during the summer of 2008, revealed 86% of Fortis customers were either extremely of very satisfied with how their claim was handled. Based on 214 responses and conducted by Consensus Research International.

Efficiency:

• Ranked ‘most efficient insurer for household claims' - Datamonitor 2009 - based on the top 20 largest household providers by GWP. Ranked ‘most efficient insurer for motor claims' - Datamonitor 2009 based on the top 10 largest motor insurance providers by GWP.

About Fortis

Fortis (Insurance UK) is a leading provider of award-winning personal and commercial lines insurance solutions in the UK. Fortis UK has two main divisions, manufacturing both non-life and life products, which are distributed through a range of channels including brokers, IFAs, intermediaries, affinity partners and the Internet, as well as various wholly or partially-owned companies (RIAS, Fortis Insurance Solutions, Affinity Solutions, Text2Insure and InsureTECH Systems).

Insuring around 7 million customers and working with a range of partners, Fortis is recognised for delivering consistent and high-quality customer experiences. It employs almost 3,000 people with a head office based in Eastleigh and others in Belfast, Bournemouth, Gloucester, Haywards Heath, London, Redditch, Reigate and Stoke-on-Trent.