QBE announces new direction and team changes
Big general insurer QBE has announced a change in strategic direction along with key senior management changes at the same time as announcing an 8 per cent improvement in full-year net profit after tax to US$761 million.
The company used its results announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) to announce a "new strategic focus" via which it said it intended to evolve from a regionally-focused multinational business to "fully integrated global insurer".
Commenting on the new focus, QBE chief executive John Neal said the company had been hugely successful over the last 15 years, but as the world changed the QBE needed to evolve to continue to meet or exceed key stakeholder expectations.
He said the company was implementing a new program to achieve economies of scope and scale through the creation of dedicated centres of excellence, to manage functions and processes which are currently replicated across the group and to improve productivity.
Neal said the initiative was expected to generate annual run-rate expense savings of at least US$250 million a year by the end of 2015.
However he also signaled that the company's broader transformation would require significant investment — something he would provide further detail on later this year.
Among the senior management changes announced by QBE were that long-serving chief financial officer Neil Drabsch would be succeeded by the current chief executive of QBE's European operations Steven Burns, while Burns would be succeeded in the European role by his deputy Richard Pryce.
At the same time Neal announced that the company's North American CEO John Rumpler would be leaving the organisation and would be replaced by David Duclos, while David Fried would be joining the company from HSBC Holdings as CEO of QBE's Asia Pacific Operations.
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