Risk Manager
Chaucer Insurance

Martyn R

00:00:03 My name is Martyn R and I’m a Risk Manager for Chaucer. In terms of a business, there’s lots of different things that could go wrong, or stop us achieving the things that we want to do as a business. And my job is to try and look forward and see what that could be, and help the business prevent that happening. It’s about helping the business to be more successful, so it’s not always about seeing the bad things. What we’re trying to do is help the good things happen and, you know, kind of reduce the chances of the bad things happening so – I’m quite an optimist by nature so I always look more to the upside, rather than the things that could go wrong I suppose.

00:00:41 I would never say that I was naturally an Academic person, but I enjoyed school, and I, you know, enjoyed being with my friends, and enjoyed learning and whatever else. I was certainly more interested in sports than academic studies. I like everything from football to golf to rugby so, you know, and all the way through tennis and everything in between, it just depends on what season it is. My dream originally, I guess, was to be a footballer. I played football to quite a high level when I was younger. But I think as I got to University and I had a few injuries, and I realised that pursuing my Academic qualifications was also a good thing to do.

00:01:21 I first started out studying Risk Management at University, which was a Risk in Insurance based course. Then at that time I was also, when I was at University, working in a pub, and I got to a point where I thought OK I’ll work in a pub and do really late nights and have great fun or I can go and work in insurance and do Risk Management. So the responsible person in me said that yeah I should go and do something with my career and the skills that I’d developed at University. So I moved away from Scotland, and moved down to England to pursue that career.

00:02:00 Although I was based in Glasgow at the time, when I was going for interviews I had to go down to London, I went to Manchester and to Leeds. So in Scotland there’s not as many jobs in Risk Management, I would say, or certainly there wasn’t back then, as there are probably now. But still in terms of Risk Management I would say in Financial Services, the majority of the jobs are in the South East, and predominantly in London.

00:02:21 In terms of a high point in my career, I think when I first came down to work in the insurance industry I didn’t know what to expect. Also coming from Scotland, and from Glasgow in particular, it’s quite a small city, so moving to somewhere the size of London is quite daunting, and I think just the fact that I’ve been relatively successful and enjoyed my work so far, and had the opportunity to travel and meet lots of nice people, make lots of good friends, has been reward enough in itself.

00:02:51 I think it’s so difficult these days for a young person to understand all the different options open to them, you know, you have a vision of where you would like to go and it never turns out that way. I think most people probably think – well I want to go to University and get my degree, and then I want to get a job. But unless you want to be a doctor or a lawyer it’s very difficult to see where that might be, because there’s so many paths that you can take.

00:03:16 So I think 18 year-old me would be quite pleased with where I am just now. I’m quite content with where I am. I think I could go on and do more, and I can still develop myself as a person, and I can still develop myself in the job that I have, so there’s still lots of opportunity ahead, but I don’t think I would change anything no. Yes I do still play football now, probably not as well as I did when I was younger, probably a bit fatter than I was when I was younger as well so –

00:03:42 ENDS