Re-sume - Don't always expect fair play.

(From Reinsurance)

When did you start in the business?

I started my career in 1964 as an apprentice at Jauch & Hubener. Young people today would scarcely believe what our working conditions were like then. If you wanted to make photocopies, you needed your superior's permission. You could only make outside phone calls using the department head's phone and, of course, if things had to move quickly, you used a telegram to communicate. In order to reduce the costs, there were codes for telegrams. Number one was for a quota-share treaty; two was for a surplus, etc (for example, some telegrams were a mixture of numbers and words, and the recipients had to decode them all!).

What was the softest/hardest market you've ever seen?

Naturally, as an apprentice, I had no idea what the terms 'hard market' and 'soft market' meant. At the end of the 1970s, we could have left the placing to our chauffeur, so to speak, as overplacing was the rule; the biggest problem with placement was signing down.

What a difference then in 1994! Reinsurers were being approached around the clock and asked for obliged lines. I can remember that our largest catastrophe contract got stuck at about 93%. So, we talked to all the reinsurers again and asked them to increase their shares by 0.75%. Then we ended up with a total of 97%. We had a second go and asked each reinsurer again to write 0.2%. We ended up with 99.5%. On the last day of the year, we got our "New Year's Eve present" from one reinsurer, and so we were able to report that we had completed the placing.

What is the strangest bit of business you've been involved with ?