Mr. Mendelsohn: Royal & SunAlliance is the product of a merger in 1996 between two of the oldest and longest-established British insurance companies. The Royal and the Sun have been doing business since 1710, so they have almost a 300-year history of providing insurance and financial services. I joined the company as Group Chief Executive in 1998, really once the merger was completed, to take the company on to the next phase of creating a truly integrated global powerhouse. That was the mission. I had come to the Royal in the United States in 1994 to help turnaround what was then a rather underperforming US business. After spending four years there, I was asked by the Board to come over and take RSA then to the next phase of its development. We are essentially one of the world's largest non-life insurance companies. We are number six in terms of premium size of companies that operate outside their home country. We have major operations in over 50 countries around the world. We have 50,000 employees. We actually write insurance and transact insurance business in over 130 countries. So we are a very major player on the non-life side, and that accounts for about 70% of our business. 30% of our business is in the life savings and investment business, largely in the UK, but we have substantial operations in Australia, Canada and Latin America. So we are actually a company that can service every kind of insurance need whether on the non-life side or the life savings and investment side.
TWST: When Royal and Sun came together, how did that shift the way
things worked in the sector?
Mr. Mendelsohn: When Royal & Sun merged in 1996, it was the first major
step, within the UK market, of what has now become a trend toward
industry consolidation. In the years subsequent to 1996, we have seen a
whole variety of mergers throughout the sector, both in the non-life and
the life side and as well now involving banks and other financial
institutions. So RSA here in the United Kingdom was the beginning of
what has become a real trend toward consolidation within the industry.
Tickers included in this excerpt: RSA
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