Welcome to our new website

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Mairi

We are really pleased with our new website www.rein4ce.co.uk and re-branding, which we have launched today just in time for the reinsurance conference, Les Rendez-Vous in Monte Carlo.

Please give us your feedback – and anything you would like to see on here that is not explained.

As many readers know, we are a public relations company that specialises in financial services, particularly insurance and reinsurance and we also deal with the companies that serve this market.

We also have a niche expertise in business to business social media – a skill set developed out of a need in the market. So, if you are so inclined and are on any platforms, please find us – we are on Twitter (@rein4cePR and @reinsurancegirl), Facebook, and LinkedIn and Mairi Mallon and Stephen Breen are also on Google+.

And if you are not, here is a wee video (showing my age here) to help us celebrate…. Celebration time! Cool and the Gang

Social Media guidelines – a freebie for insurance and reinsurance bods

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Mairi

It's Free!

Some say you don’t get something for nothing – well that is not true. Today we are feeling generous.

At rein4ce, we feel that social media should be part of the public relations (PR) offering – and we help clients get to grips with it.

And the first thing we do is issue guidelines for staff – they need to know where they stand, and management needs to draw a line in the sand to legally protect their company.

Today, below, you will find sensible social media guidelines to use in your company. This will not only help your employees know what they are and are not allowed to do, but also help you with risk management by ring-fencing your company from inappropriate behaviour from rogue staff (and it happens, I tell you).

Here below I’ve pasted a short set of rules, and a longer set of guidelines. They are based a lot on common sense, other guidelines we Continue reading →

Insurance industry gets social media – check out the Twitter use at #BIBA2011!

Posted on May 17, 2011 by Mairi

Last week UK brokers gathered at their annual event, BIBA 2011 in Manchester and for the first time in UK insurance and broker communities, social media was used fairly widely.
This follows hot on the heels of risk managers and insurers gathering in Vancouver a week earlier for RIMS 2011, which was a staggering success on Twitter.
BIBA attendees used #BIBA2011 to bookmark their tweets about the event, RIMS used #RIMS2011.
What was interesting was who was using Twitter. In Vancouver, what was most striking was the use of Twitter by BIG corporates – there is a list here in the last blog – but included Aon Corporation, FM Global, XL Capital, ACE Ltd, Zurich, Willis and Marsh. In the Manchester event, there were a lot more individuals and much of the noise came from press such as Post Magazine, Insurance Age and Insurance Times and their reporters. Continue reading →

Social Media – is it the “Green Eggs and Ham” of insurance, reinsurance and risk management professionals?

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Mairi

I do love Dr Seuss. From reading the books as a child to reading them to my own children, they really are a joy. One of my favourites is “Green Eggs and Ham”.

For those of you who have not had the fortune to read this kids book, it is the story is a tale of Sam who tries to persuade someone to eat green eggs and ham. “You do not like them. So you say. Try them! Try them! and you may. Try them and you may, I say.”

Well I do sometimes feel like Sam, trying to persuade the insurance, reinsurance and risk management world that social media is not the devil’s work and actually, believe it or not, is a really useful and effective communications tool. Sometimes I do, finally, get someone to taste and they don’t just like it, they love it. So, I urge you to take the time, log on to Facebook, Twitter, google for some blogs, pop in insurance, reinsurance or risk management into YouTube and see what is out there – there is a whole world of communication developing. Continue reading →

“I don’t believe in social media” – how the insurance and reinsurance professionals have moved on

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Mairi

I am still amazed by how many people I still come across that say they don’t “believe” in social media or social networking. But this is no religious cult. Saying you don’t believe in social media is like saying “I don’t believe in mobile phones” – silly really. It is just a new technology we can use to communicate with each other.

That said, last month I was asked to speak to a women in insurance group called TWIN in the UK about social media (and a very nice group they are too).

What struck me about this group of insurance and reinsurance professionals was how many of these very clever women were now using social media on a day-to-day basis. Almost everyone in the room was on LinkedIn, many were on Facebook and one was blogging and on Twitter. Continue reading →

Happy New Year Insurance and Reinsurance People! Six ways to have happy social media planning in 2011!

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Mairi

Firstly, Happy New Year to you all – may you all have a prosperous 2011.

Secondly, thanks for your support in 2010, and for reading my blog. Last year was a year when many wholesale insurers, reinsurers and service providers start to use social media. Some jumped in with both feet, while others dipped their toes and others still watched from the sidelines to admire the ripples… and see if anyone drowned in this medium that scares so many.

Results were varied. Under the sheer weight of the work needed to harness the power of LinkedIn, blogging, Facebook and Twitter successfully as a big corporate, some floundered, others lost their way and some even gave up the ghost and left their excellent work hanging in cyberspace. Some kept hacking away at the cliff-face and have made real progress in their understanding and use of the medium within the restrictions of the corporate world. Continue reading →

How to convince an executive to invest in social media? Speak his language.

Posted on December 6, 2010 by Mairi

I was just reading the blog post by Mike Wise on getting executives to “buy in” to social media – and it made me think to post up my thoughts on this here as it is something I deal with all the time.

I spend a lot of time with executives talking about social media. And I am often brought into board rooms to help the executives understand what social media is and look at it to see if it can help them in their particular field.

To get the “buy in” (I don’t like that word, but it fits the bill), I feel I need to look at it from their perspective. I take time to show them that there are good ways to use these things – and the four pillars – blogging, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – are simply tools that will make it easier to communicate with other people. Just like when websites came in. Or emails became the norm. Or Blackberrys took over the insurance world. Continue reading →

Back to risk management with Facebook – for insurance and reinsurance companies

Posted on November 5, 2010 by Mairi

I had a huge response to last week’s posting on Facebook inserting Wikipedia pages of Fortune 500 and FTSE 100 companies without their permission – or even knowledge. It is a potential public relations disaster.

Many listed insurance and reinsurance companies and large insurance and reinsurance brokers (and other large corporations) now have “Pages” which are listed under their name under the tag “Organization”. Swiss Re and Munich Re are there. As are many, many others. The bigger the organisation, the more likely it is to have a page.

A little technical detail now to follow up on last week’s post: Continue reading →

The amazing folly of large corporations not being on Facebook

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Mairi

Today I was looking for something on Facebook and came across the Lloyd’s of London group site. What I found (see screen grab below) was a page imported from Wikipedia – this time in Portuguese (!). I’ve talked about this before, but it really beggars belief that Lloyd’s is so sloppy in its risk and brand management as to not have control of its own Facebook page.

A while back, Facebook started importing Wikipedia pages for Fortune 100 and FTSE 100 companies onto Facebook if the companies did not have a Facebook page – all without their knowlegde . Remember Wiki pages are updated by the general public, and not controlled by any company or organisation. I’m sure you can see the risks of that without me having to spell them out. For corporations that pride themselves in managing their image this is not good – to put it mildly. Continue reading →

The risk and rewards of Facebook for insurers and reinsurers

Posted on July 26, 2010 by Mairi

Part 1

The risks of Employees:

Last week Facebook hit half a billion active users. Many in the insurance and reinsurance world would say “so what”, but in the most basic business, let alone complex risk management, Facebook’s risks and rewards have to be understood.

If you don’t know the risks with employees – here they are: basically your staff can go on and do oodles of reputational damage if you: a) hire substandard people who don’t know the boundaries; and b) don’t tell them they can’t. From criticising competitors to revealing trade secrets, Facebook is number 1 when it comes to giving managers the jitters. Continue reading →