Guest Authors
Margaret Urquart | Karin Lloyd
A graduate of Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, with a Bachelor of Arts in music and psychology and a Diploma in business, Margaret J.Urquhart (Cinel) joined Mutual Life of Canada, now Sun Life Financial, as an underwriter in 1992. She has underwritten life, critical illness and long term care insurance.
A certified trainer of adults, she was promoted to Underwriting Training Coordinator responsible for the initial and ongoing training of underwriters and the sales force in 1998. In 2001 she left underwriting to spend 2 years on the Customer Experience team writing and delivering training for all individual insurance staff on agent empathy and service recovery.
In 2003 she joined the long term care insurance (LTCI) underwriting management team to help develop in-house LTCI underwriting capabilities.
Margaret has worked extensively on developing a unique electronic underwriting, and underwriting and issue system to electronically underwrite and issue policies, and in June 2006 left Sun Life to join Hank George Inc. and dedicate her energy to specific underwriting projects such as Hank’s Underwriting Guide to Rx, and guest writing the Initial Education Program.
Margaret is an avid scuba diver and still lives in Waterloo.
Karin has recently set up her own consultancy practice following 24 years in Underwriting and Claims in the direct market and as a reinsurer. She set up and managed Swiss Re UK's first dedicated Claims department and was a senior member of the Global Underwriting and Claims team, contributing to the development of Lifeguide and a number of innovative web-based tools to support Underwriters and Claims assessors worldwide. Her global responsibilities extended to close collaboration with colleagues in Product development, Pricing, Marketing, Experience analysis and Operational risk management.
Since branching out on her own in mid-2006, Karin has worked for companies based in the US, UK and Australia on a variety of projects including the development of an auditing framework, operational reviews, assisting a new life company and developing training materials.
Outside of her commercial activities, Karin is involved in a major UK initiative to develop and promote long term disability coverage, the Income Protection Task Force. She also sits on the management board of a newly launched Women's Insurance Network and provides claims advice to members of a charity dedicated to stroke victims of working age.
Karin lives in the old market town of Kingston-upon-Thames in greater London and enjoys walking and jogging in nearby Richmond Park and socialising with friends at the riverside cafés. In the football season, weekends are often spent traveling to see the team she has supported since childhood, 5 times’ European Champions Liverpool. She also has a strong interest in design and her house is littered with projects ranging from a pair of shoes to a marble lizard carved under the tuition of a master sculptor in Tuscany.