reinsurance girl’s blog voted into top blogs for insurance law by LexisNexis for 2011

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Mairi

We received an email late last night at rein4ce telling us that this blog has been voted onto the top 50 blogs by the LexisNexis Insurance Law Community (cheers from the office floor).

We are delighted, of course. It is the second year running that we have been voted onto this list, and we find ourselves in very distinguished company. As rein4ce is a public relations company rather than an insurance or law firm, it is particularly pleasing to have made the list. We specialise in public relations for the insurance and reinsurance markets – and companies that service them such as law firms – and it is a real accolade to have been selected. Continue reading →

Reinsurance Girl’s blog nominated for LexisNexis top 50 insurance law blogs

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Mairi

We are delighted at rein4ce that our Reinsurance Girl blog has been once again nominated for the LexisNexis top 50 insurance law blogs.

The list is featured on the LexisNexis Insurance Law Community and is well worth checking out as it has some favourite resources on there – from Artemis.bm, to GC Capital Ideas, to Lloyd’s of London’s blog, to Goldberg Segalla’s Insurance and Reinsurance Report, Risk Management Monitor and Willis’ new Willis Wire blog.

At rein4ce, we don’t normally ask for much, but we would today ask for your support by voting for our blog. Simply follow the link here and leave a comment by October 7th offering your support. Every little helps!

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 →

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 risk and rewards of Facebook

Posted on August 27, 2010 by Mairi

Part II

Risk Management

For years the insurance and reinsurance markets have been talking about Enterprise Risk Management. Well, believe it or not, these days, risk managers should be looking at not just media, and communications in general, but also taking a good hard look at social media.

Again, Facebook is high on the list of factors that could impact on reputational risk. Facebook is probably the least useful tool so far in business to business social media for insurance and reinsurance markets. Those doing it well include Insurance Journal, Travelers and of course the rather wonderful Allianz Knowledge – who astonish and amaze at every turn.

So – don’t get to “het up” about it, as we say in Scotland. Like all social media, it is not rocket science – it just takes a wee bit of time to learn and understand – and a whole lot of common sense. Just think about what you want to say and who you want to say it to – before you do anything – and don’t do anything on Facebook that does not fit in with your corporate image or guidelines.

For those new to this, have a look at the recent Business Insurance webinar on the risks associated with social media – Marsh’s Simon Barker makes a lot of sense when he talks about social media in context of enterprise risk management and also on how to react to negative comments. Continue reading →