I feel extremely honoured to be taking the reins of the Luton and Hertfordshire Insurance Institute and whilst I have big shoes to fill, I have a solid foundation to commence my presidency with – thank you Michael Brett. We’re in good shape.

Without getting ahead of myself I’d like to reiterate that I think the success of our cracking little council is down to the calibre and dedication of the team involved as everyone offers something different. It is so important to me that that everyone feels free to voice their opinion and I am certainly not precious about having things pointed out to me if we can do them better, it is a democracy after all.

Naturally if people are more comfortable speaking or emailing me one to one then please do.

My main aims are to encourage member engagement across all areas of the institute both in terms of CII and PFS but also geographically speaking. We have a vast number of members who perhaps haven't attended an event recently but we want you to know that we are keen to listen and be as flexible as we can be to meet the needs of our members and part of this will be a wider range of venues being utilised.