Grant Barrans has a fantastic view from his spacious office in Dawson Street, which overlooks the junction of Dawson Street/Nassau Street and the grounds of Trinity College. However, it's a bit noisy. No fewer than four Garda cars, with sirens wailing, drive past during the course of the interview, as well as that tour bus that drives by every 15 minutes playing "Cockles and Mussels". "You can see and hear everything from here," he says, but he's not complaining.
The Yorkshire-born managing director of Hibernian Life and Pensions has certainly seen plenty of action through his various management roles for Norwich Union over the past 23 years, which have included stints in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Luxembourg. He was in South Africa when Nelson Mandela was released and when the country underwent the revolution that overthrew the apartheid regime. He was even involved socially with the ANC. "Some of the guys who are now government ministers would have been my friends."
After a grammar school education in London, he got a first-class honours degree in Maths from Kings College, London, before joining Norwich Union in 1977 to qualify as an actuary. He says that the attraction of Norwich Union was the prospect of being able to work overseas, particularly as his family moved around a lot as a child. Married to Maeve, from Co. Waterford, and with an 18-month-old daughter, he has lived and worked in Ireland for more than four years now. He considers Ireland to be the "most pleasant working environment" he has ever worked in and that the social aspect of life in Ireland "has to be experienced to be believed".
"One of the advantages Irish businesses have is that they're underrated. I don't think the international business environment is expecting such sophistication." He says that Irish businesses often succeed because they're dealing with people who don't expect what he calls an "acute" attitude.
Since he was appointed managing director of Hibernian Life and Pensions in April this year following the merger of CGU, Norwich Union and Hibernian to form the Hibernian Group, Mr Barrans has had a busy few months. Hibernian Life and Pensions is one of three new core divisions of the Hibernian Group. The other two are concerned with general insurance and investments.
"It's been a very, very complex merger. The bulk of the work is behind us and we're extremely pleased with the progress we've made," said Mr Barrans.
He says that the number of redundancies across all three companies as a result of the merger has been very small, largely because of the opportunities afforded by strong economic growth. "The problem with this merger was not `how do we achieve cost savings by telling people to leave the company?' It was actually the opposite. We were having to persuade all these people to stay because we need good people for the growth of this dramatically enlarged company."
The merger did result in the departure of some senior management across all three companies. "At the very top, it's harder to see what jobs can be offered. Hibernian becoming part of an international group meant a very different nature of operation, so certainly there weren't going to be the same career opportunities in that environment." He stressed that all the senior departures were on amicable terms.
He describes his management style as "open and participative", and puts a strong focus on communication. He agrees that there is a danger that people like him who are wizards at mathematics may develop superiority complexes, cultivated by always being top of the class in the subject at school.
"All actuaries tend to have this background of not understanding why other people are having problems." He says the trick is to balance the technical skills of actuaries with other skills from other team members to bring the right resources to bear.
Perhaps it's down to his background in mathematics, but Mr Barrens is visibly chuffed about Hibernian Life and Pensions' new sales weapon: a box. Like a little boy bursting with pride over a new toy, he insists on showing me an attractive-looking blue cardboard box, which opens up to reveal a series of folders containing brochures that give details of all of the company's life insurance, investment and pension products. For Mr Barrans, it clearly adds an element of tangibility to what the company is selling.
"The whole of life in one little box," he jokes. The box is provided to financial advisers to show to customers, and the contents are what he calls "disclosure-friendly". By this he means that the whole environment surrounding, for example, pensions and the pension industry is explained before the product is presented.
"People don't like financial services because it's a complex area that they only get to deal with occasionally, " he says. "You don't buy these things with the same familiarity and understanding about the environment, the terms, and the options. We've designed these products to provide the best value for money and, as well, to be simple for the customer when he tries to understand what it is that's being recommended."
This "box" has been clearly designed to take on board new legislation that comes into force on the January 1st, 2001, that will require insurance brokers to disclose to the customer what they make from commissions. "Commission disclosure will dispel what for 99 per cent of all sales is a myth anyway. Brokers are doing a good job out there. A broker disclosing his commission will remove the negative, because customers want to know, `what's the deal?' They'll have it in black and white in front of them."
Mr Barrens believes there is a difference in the generations in terms of their attitudes to disclosure. "The younger generation feels it's perfectly natural to understand well "how much is that man making when he sells me this product?" while the older generation would think that's like asking someone their salary. That's a personal detail. They wouldn't even discuss it. "
Mr Barrans is on record as supporting a system of compulsory pensions, such as the one in Australia, where people who don't have pensions pay higher taxes. He says that while the insurance industry here has done well to penetrate the pensions market, the remaining 40 per cent or so presents a major challenge. "Of all the people that should own a pension, 50 to 60 per cent will have come to some arrangement. Unfortunately, there's a whole crowd of people who don't, and the State wants those people to provide for themselves." He says that the provision in a new Pensions Bill that will introduce personal retirement savings accounts will only deal with part of the problem. "The Government should maximise the impact of PRSAs by considering the introduction of a degree of compulsion or tax advantages which are removed if PRSAs are not taken up. We have reams of consumer research that show people do underestimate how much they need to start earning their pensions."
On the subject of compulsory retirement age, Mr Barrans believes it is "criminal" in the Celtic Tiger economy to force people to stop working at 65. "Having said that, I don't think that people who want to work will be prevented from working one way or another."
