MS Amlin Reviews

Colleagues are being told a pack of lies. Its going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. The integration, which was supposed to be about synergies and growth, has been a messy smash up leaving the smaller, former MSI company in tatters. Legacy MSI staff (the red squirrels) numbers are decimated. Even ex-Amlin staff (the grey squirrels), who's numbers are thriving, are struggling with low morale, poor company performance, inadequate leadership and communications that ignore the facts and gloss over the reality of the situation. New starters are very quickly bewildered by the atmosphere within their teams and the culture of the organisation. There's an almost tangible feeling that, behind closed doors, the Exec team can clearly see the business is unravelling. But no-one has the courage to openly admit that Amlin was tarted up for acquisition, the Japanese were duped, the staff don't like each other and the results are really bad - its embarrassing to be part of it.

Still too much dead wood floating around at senior levels New CEO is a good chap, but not sure if a white, middle-aged, public school educated, former underwriter is quite the answer we need to solve our myriad issues Too many parts of the underwriting business simply fail to make any money and should have been cut adrift long ago We don't invest in proper change initiatives that will improve performance long term, but instead sink millions into never-ending finance and reporting programmes that barely paper over the cracks (or indeed simply create new issues) There has been a historical reluctance to deal with poor performance at a mid to senior level, instead preferring to shift the offending parties into various roles around the company. The recent cost cutting exercise has made the usual errors seen in these scenarios - instead of tackling appalling abuses of personal expenses and poor budget management within teams, we've instead chosen to cut back on things like free fruit on the office floors, which is was something genuinely appreciated by most staff (but hey, we're still 'the place to work', right guys?) Can't see how we're going to meet our commitments to Japan over the next year or so, so expect its going to be a choppy ride for the foreseeable future