2013 Celebrating 50 years of Airmic

It was 1963 – the year of President Kennedy’s assassination. A group of men came together to discuss the latest ‘big idea’ – the creation of an association for corporate insurance buyers.  We now take Airmic for granted, but the project was daring, ambitious and ground-breaking.

Board member Nick Hughes, a child at the time, remembers the period well because his father Glyn was one of the founders; he recalls the new association and its big American cousin RIMS being big topics of conversation at home. It was a time of excitement and men in smoke-filled rooms, as the perils of tobacco were not yet fully appreciated.

So in late 1963 at the Bonnington Hotel in London AIMIC was born – the Association of Insurance Managers in Industry and Commerce. The R-word was to come later because risk management as we understand it today did not exist. In fact, the term was not used in AIMIC documents until 1968.

The initial subscriptions were a guinea (£1.05), and within eighteen months it had 150 members.

Inevitably, the association was very different then. Nonetheless, the vision of its founders was justified by events. Membership expanded and, at the same time, its influence in the market.

In 1966 AIMIC recruited its first paid member of staff. George Richardson worked part-time from home for £250 p.a. The first full-time employee, Joy Gortman, took up her post in 1970. Subs had to rise to £7.00 to pay her salary. Even so, she also worked from home. It is hard to imagine now, but for nearly fifteen years the association operated without its own office; it moved into the old Plantation House in September 1978.

There are some things that AIMIC/Airmic has always done well. Within a year, it had its first annual dinner, at the Mount Royal Hotel. In 1965, it held its first informal ‘Educational Conference’ – the forerunner to the annual Airmic conference, which went on to become by the far the biggest risk management gathering in the UK.

In some ways, the old AIMIC bore little resemblance to the modern highly professional and diverse organisation, with its substantial full-time secretariat. The association has had to adapt and evolve to remain relevant. Women have held all the top posts and make up 37% if the membership, something that would once have been unthinkable, even though it was never an entirely male set-up. Ina Barker (later Tomkinson), for example, was one of the pioneers and later went on to run the association.

Look a bit more closely, however, and the similarities are there. The fundamentals of insurance have not changed, nor has the need to bring together professional buyers and give them a voice. Risk management was a natural extension. Above all, members who are willing to give up their time to lead the association and support its activities remain vital to the association; they are why it exists.

Laurie Meldrum, founder-chairman

George Richardson, Airmic's (known as AIMIC at the time) first paid member of staff. Recruited in 1966

Airmic News will carry a series of reflections throughout 2013 on how the association developed.