Kwik Fit Insurance's Ron Hewitt Joins Chamber of Commerce

NCD News: Kwik Fit Insurance - 01.07.08

>> NCD News: Facebook: murder, affairs, suicide, bullying ... a real society!
>> NCD News: How many No Claims Bonus years do you have? Are you sure?
>> NCD News: Women lying about rape to claim compensation
>> NCD News: "Up to 75% No Claims Discount!" they shout ... "up to"???

Kwik Fit Insurance's Ron Hewitt Joins Chamber of Commerce: Ron Hewitt may be one of the most dynamic figures in modern British insurance. He was a former Managing Director at Kwik Fit and Director of Operations at the RAC. He took over Kwik Fit when it was losing substantial amounts of money: by the time he left the firm in 2002, it had the fastest rate of growth among motor insurers in Europe. He also was able to help Kwik Fit win a number of customer service awards during his tenure. In his "spare time," he has even managed to write a few novels.

Nowadays, however, Mr. Hewitt is best known as Chief Executive of the Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce. Interestingly enough, though, since his entrance into that position in 2005, he has not simply acted as a quiet link between government, society and business as most such heads do. Rather, he has aggressively worked to develop the city and make it truly a world-beater.

To do this, he has apparently taken the same sorts of performance metrics he successfully utilized in the commercial sector and applied them to his current role as part of the vanguard of the Edinburgh/Scottish business community. He has not only sought lower taxes and land use restrictions, but also advocated greater "hard" (such as transportation) and "soft" (such as education) infrastructure.

He has repeatedly and publicly reminded Edinburgh residents that the city must be "globally competitive" in social and economic terms. This would be carried out through several main thrusts: liberalization of the city's economy, investments in the aforementioned infrastructures, and effective political engagement with Edinburgh/Scottish and national political authorities.

All this was well evident in the April-May 2007 edition of New Business Comment (the Chamber's magazine). It provided an overview of a talk by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, an analysis of the city's business climate and, most tellingly, a comparison of Edinburgh with competitor cities around the world. In an April 2008 interview with Business7 news, Mr. Hewitt pointedly asserted that the future of Edinburgh had to lie with allowing developers to add to the city's infrastructure if it was to keep up with its national and global rivals. He stated that such development could accommodate the sensitive issue of conservation by insuring land was used prudently and with history and nature in mind.

Mr. Hewitt is not the only former insurance person to delve into government, however. Insurance executives in some sense make perfect fits for local and national government. With their experiences in the private sector, they are accustomed to efficient deployment of resources and personnel. At the same time, since insurance is a heavily regulated field, they are also accustomed to the realities of bureaucracies, politics and legislation. Dr. Andrew Dlugolecki, for example, was a senior executive at several major insurance companies, including Aviva. He now privately consults British and UN organizations on climate change. Phillip Moore, Chief Finance Officer at Revenue and Customs, was formerly with Price Waterhouse Insurance. †