Waddingham, who took up his new role on 1 March, is moving to the Midlands from the Isle of Man, where he has lived and worked for the past three years.
As reported last month, Lloyds Banking Group announced on 7 Feb that it was closing its IoM-based CMI/Scottish Widows operation, which marketed offshore bonds to the UK market, to new business, citing “falls in new business levels as a result of intense competition”.
However, the company said 150 staff out of the 160 people who were employed by the business at the beginning of February would remain on its payroll, and that the company would continue to be based in the Clerical Medical House building in Douglas.
Today, a spokesman for Lloyds said Waddingham’s duties there are being assumed by Nigel Rothery, who is moving to the IoM from elsewhere in Lloyds, and whose title will be managing director, Isle of Man, for Lloyds Banking Group.
At NFU Mutual – the full name of which is the National Farmers Union Mutual Insurance Society Ltd – Waddingham will be involved in running its national Flexible Payments operations and customer support services within Mutual Direct, the company’s direct sales and service operation. He will reports to Donny MacLeod, manager of NFU Mutual Direct.
Prior to joining Clerical Medical International, Waddingham had been head of strategic relationships with Britannia Building Society, and was known to colleagues in the insurance industry for having had a banking industry past.
In an article in International Adviser last year, Waddingham, a former rugby player who spent seven years with the Leicester Tigers, said he would list Sir Clive Wooward among his business heroes, explaining how his former Tigers colleague had successfully managed to transfer his business experience to the sporting arena, “culminating in the 2003 Rugby World Cup win against the reigning champions, Australia”.
In the same article, Waddingham also expressed frustration with “the continued negative connotations attached to the word ‘offshore’”.
Insurers with history
Both Clerical Medical and NFU Mutual have histories that date back more than a century, and which had their origins in catering for people in specific industries.
Clerical Medical was created in 1824 specifically to offer insurance exclusively to clergymen and doctors. Because they spent much of their time ministering to people with contagious and often incurable diseases, men and women in these professions often had difficulty in finding insurers.
NFU Mutual, which is still affiliated with the National Farmers Union but which is not owned by it, was founded in 1910 by seven Midlands farmers, who conceived it as a means to entice new members to join their two-year-old farmers’ union by offering union members insurance at cost. Life insurance cover was introduced in the 1920s. It began insuring individuals and businesses uninvolved in farming in the 1980s.
Today NFU Mutual has a network of more than 300 offices, mainly located in rural towns and villages throughout England, the Channel Islands and the IoM, and sells a range of insurance products through an agency network and through the Mutual Direct channel.
