Insurance Australia Group chief risk officer resigns

IAG managing director and CEO Nick Hawkins confirmed this week that David Watts has stepped down after serving three years in the position.

“David has driven a big program of work to strengthen risk management and uplift our risk culture across the company,” Mr Hawkins said.

“A key achievement is the successful delivery of our risk maturity program which has improved our risk systems, policies and processes, and launched our integrated risk management system.

“Having delivered on all these commitments, and with the risk maturity program finishing up at the end of the year, David feels now is the right time to take on a new challenge.”

Mr Watts will continue as IAG’s CRO into 2022 while a search process for a new CRO is undertaken.

Earlier this month, IAG was forced to respond to a class action put against it by Melbourne hospitality business CMC Hospitality.

Slater & Gordon Lawyers confirmed to ifa that it has filed the class action “on behalf of thousands of Australian business interruption (BI) insurance policyholders against Insurance Australia Limited, one of the insurers that have knocked back claims for losses following forced COVID-related closures”.

IAG said at the time that it was aware of an application being filed in the Federal Court but was “not otherwise aware of the detailed nature of the application, except that it appears to relate to insureds who hold policies with CGU and business interruption losses related to COVID-19”.

Neil Griffiths

Neil is the Deputy Editor of the wealth titles, including ifa and InvestorDaily.

Neil is also the host of the ifa show podcast.