Liz Green:

Welcome to the fourth instalment of ICMIF’s panel. We have a panel discussion with CEOs from around the world to talk about, really, what’s the most strategic challenges that are on their minds at the moment. We’re very, very lucky to have a very, very high calibre panel with us, starting with Roy Miclat, who is the president, and CEO of 1CISP in the Philippines. Thank you, Roy, for making the time. We also have Andy Taylor, who again is president, and CEO of Gore Mutual in Canada. Hi there, Andy. We also have Izak Smit, who is a group chief executive officer of PPS in South Africa. Thank you so much for joining us.

As you can see, we have a nice diverse group of leaders from all over the world running very, very different organisations. But don’t just take it from me. Let’s get in there, and have a quick introduction from each of them, starting from Roy to give us some context about their organisations. Over to you, Roy.

Roy Miclat:

Yeah. Hi, everyone. I’m Roy Miclat. I am from the 1 Cooperative Insurance System in the Philippines. A lot of ICMIF members are asking, why do we have a 1 in our organisation? Actually, it’s an acronym. But we use the Arabic number 1 network for everyone, Cooperative Insurance System of the Philippines. Because we have One Coop Bank, 1CoopHealth, and One Coop Tech. Everything is one network for everyone. That’s why we have a one at CISP.

We only serve cooperatives in the Philippines, from micro, small, medium, large to billionaire cooperatives, communities, and institutions in the Philippines. I’ve been with 1CISP for 11 years. I started working in 2013. It’s my 12th year yesterday. I’ve started my 12th year yesterday. It’s been a good journey for me. I hope that I can be still of service to the cooperative movement, particularly cooperative insurers after my retirement. Thank you.

Liz Green:

Wonderful. Roy, thank you so much. You are one in a million. That’s all I can tell you in terms of working with you over the years. You’re just such a great leader. But from one great leader to another great leader, we have Andy Taylor. Andy, would you like to introduce yourself?

Andy Taylor:

Thanks, Liz. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. Excited to join the conversation. My name’s Andy Taylor. I’m the CEO of Gore Mutual Insurance Company. Gore Mutual is Canada’s oldest P&C, mutual insurance company, 185 years old. We were founded in 1839, and really proud of the long heritage of this organisation.

We’re about 700 million in premiums in Canada. That would make us a midsize insurer. But what’s interesting about us is we actually compete against the largest scale players in the industry. I’ve been with the company for 20 years next year, but the last five as the CEO. I’ve been leading what we call our Next Horizon Strategy that I’m sure we’ll get into throughout the conversations today, to really reinvent the company to ensure it’s going to have a successful, and thriving future. Excited to share more about that today.

Liz Green:

Yeah, really looking forward to that, Andy. There is some exciting stuff I know you’re going to share. Last but not least, over to Izak. Tell us a bit about your organisation, a bit about yourself.

Izak Smit:

Yeah, thank you, Liz. Thank you for the invitation. Izak Smit, PPS. PPS has been around for a while. Andy, not as long as you guys. But we are about 17 years away from celebrating our centenary. We were founded 1941. Interestingly, the first P for PPS is for professionals. We only focus on the professional market segment in South Africa.

We were predominantly focusing on the life side, income protection, especially for most of our existence. But over the last 20 years or so, we’ve branched out, and we now cover the full spectrum of financial services. We’ve got about under the 50,000 product members. To give you a bit of a flavour of size, our top line on the life side, 400 million US, our asset management firm, about 5 billion of assets under management, and bottom line profits, call it around 200, $250 million per annum. Yeah, so that is PPS.

Liz Green:

Wonderful organisation. Thank you so much for that, Izak. Very illuminating.

We get on now to the purpose of our discussion, which is to share a bit of information. Firstly, can I talk to you about what’s released strategically on your minds at the moment? What are those big challenges that you are facing? And, how are you addressing them? If I may, perhaps, if I’m going to start with Izak, if that’s okay with you. How do you think that these challenges have been impacting your business operations, and your strategic priorities? What are those challenges at the moment?

Izak Smit:

Yeah, Liz. Our culture at PPS is always to see the opportunity in any challenge. I would say in South Africa, big challenge. We were in a very low growth, almost like no growth environment for quite a while, even before COVID, challenging economic environment. Also, again, coming back to our segment focus, the professional focus, it is a very thin market segment. So very exciting things that we are busy with.

On the segment piece, we are about to start also a mutual opportunity in South Africa, in the non-professional space. It’ll be under a different brand. It’s part of PPS. It’s in fact a division of us, but it’ll operate under a different brand in South Africa. We are literally months away from rolling that out in South Africa. That is quite exciting.

We’ve also started to do a couple of things elsewhere in the world. For example, we’ve got a business in Australia that we started about eight years ago. That is growing very well. Again, the mutual is a differentiator in the life insurance space in Australia. Lots of the businesses demutualized, and we’re coming in there.

Then, next door or as the people in that part of the world will say across the ditch, we are also about to start the business in New Zealand as well. We’re busy with licence applications there. I think that is exciting stuff. Then maybe just one final thing. We are challenging ourselves around, again, back to our purpose at PPS.

Our purpose, we pull it wider than only the financial aspects. We really want to impact our members’ lives. We want to enrich professional lives. We were very inspired two years ago at the ICMIF conference in Rome, just a year what all the other mutuals in the world are doing. We’ve been really challenging ourselves in that aspect. We are currently working on a bit of a strategy just to play a wider role, assessing members in their personal growth, and almost their life maps, their life goals, and things like that. That is something exciting that we are busy with.

Liz Green:

Wow. Andy, and Roy, does any of what Izak shared, resonate? Do you have any questions or comments?

Roy Miclat:

For me, I don’t have a comment. But we have a very opposite market. Izak is looking at the professionals, while we are looking at the informal sector of the Philippines, or about the lowest 30% of the population. But I am happy because you’re also looking at it as part of your business.

I would like to congratulate you for that, because they’re the most vulnerable, and they’re the most who need help in terms of managing their risk, and need to be protected. I would like to congratulate them, Liz.

Izak Smit:

Okay, Roy.

Liz Green:

That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful, Izak.

Andy Taylor:

Yeah. The only thing I would add to that, I guess, in the P&C market in Canada, growth necessarily isn’t a challenge, but profitable growth would be the challenge, given the two macro trends. One is the trends in climate change. We are seeing a meaningful increase in the frequency of catastrophes in Canada. One data point would be we used to have about 500 million on average of losses in a year in Canada related to weather-related catastrophes. That’s running at about 3 billion on an annual basis. We just had two months this summer where it was in excess of 7 billion. Navigating climate change, and also pricing segmentation, and sophistication to grow profitably as more of the focus in the P&C market in Canada.

Liz Green:

Is that resonating within you? Yeah, sorry.

Roy Miclat:

Yeah, I would like to invite Andy now in the Philippines. It’s the tropical cyclone period. Right now, we have a tropical cyclone that has just passed the Philippines. It’s really the challenge for us, especially cooperative insurers, because our market is the bottom 40% of the population. They are in the most vulnerable areas in the Philippines.

But for me, I always look at it as an opportunity to make a difference for us mutuals, and cooperative insurers. Because private insurers never touched this market. They always refuse to insure this sector or this segment of the population because of the high risk that entails insuring this sector or the segment of the population. But for me, I always tell this to my colleagues, “There is always money at the bottom of the pyramid.” There is always money at the bottom of the pyramid.

Liz Green:

Andy, it’s lovely to hear Izak, and Roy both seeing challenges as opportunities. Do you feel the same way?

Andy Taylor:

Yeah, I do. I think our entire Next Horizon Strategy is really founded on that basis. In 2018, 19, we actually spent a lot of time with our board, and our employees talking about what we called the market forces. The market forces, for us, were macro trends that could be seen as threats, but to Izak, and Roy’s point, we said, “How do we actually turn that into an opportunity for the company?”

We asked the question, “If you look out 10 years, and that’s why we call it Next Horizon, what do we need to do today to make sure this company can thrive in this environment?” Some of the key trends that we were seeing again here in Canada in the P&C market at that time was significant consolidation of our distribution of our brokers. We sell through independent brokers, and the smaller family owned brokerages were being consolidated into multi-billion dollar brokerages.

As a midsize mutual, we didn’t have a value proposition for scale distribution. I talked a bit about climate change being another trend. We were also seeing the reinsurance market, which we’ve all seen globally change. Higher retentions, higher costs, more volatility in our results, and then the need to invest in technology. All these we’re putting pressure on.

At the time, we were about a $450 million midsize mutual. The opportunity for us was to say, “How do we actually get to become a scale player over the next decade?” We decided that we need to achieve scale diversification, and have access to capital to compete in this environment where these market forces are coming out. What I would say is there’s so much support for the mutual model.

Our brokers are rooting for us to win the opportunities there for us, employees want to work for companies that have a purpose. There’s a tremendous foundation that we have to build on. We definitely share that view, that although not easy, it’s certainly an opportunity for us.

Liz Green:

Absolutely. I love this, your call to action, your vision of the Next Horizon, Andy, I think it’s really inspiring. I’d imagine that along with the vision, the strategy, there’d be an internal or a cultural push as well. I’d imagine around this in terms of rallying your people.

Andy Taylor:

Yeah, there is a great comment. I think we’ve seen two things happen culturally. We’ve seen a significant change in our workforce. Again, having been with the company for 20 years when I arrived, many of our employees had been with us for 25 years. They’d been there for a long time.

We have a lot of new employees. We’ve doubled the size of the company. One thing, I think, is having that exciting strategy, and having a purpose has allowed us to attract the talent. But I think the cultural shift is trying to pivot the organisation to more performance mindset as well. Really, how do we actually bring together that mutuality with performance to compete against the large public companies, and shareholder companies. That’s been an exciting shift for our internal culture. One we’re still working on.

Liz Green:

Absolutely. Does that resonate with you, guys? Izak and Roy, have you got this balance between performance, mutuality, and purpose in your organisations?

Izak Smit:

Roy, go first, and then I’ll follow. Yeah, go for it, Roy.

Roy Miclat:

Okay, thank you. I started with 1CISP in 2013 September. This organisation was about to be shut down by the regulator. It was losing money, 135 million pesos. It’s minus 49 million in terms of bottom line. It is being shut down. The regulator wants to shut it down, but some cooperatives wanted to push with it, continue its vision, and mission.

In the last 10 years, being a mutual, being cooperative resonated to the young people that we have recruited in the organisation. We have employees that started together with me. They are still with me up to now. They really love being a part of the mutual organisation. I’m a baby boomer. The younger generations, the millennials, the Gen X, the Gen Z, they have to work in an organisation that has a purpose, and that impacts the community where they had chosen to serve.

Particularly, we have a product we call Home Protect. Liz, I think this is one of the things that you have looked into the members of ICMIF, because re-insurers doesn’t want to insure parametric or index-based insurance that insures the vulnerables. What we did was to absorb, we retained everything, all the risks. Who opposed was the board, because they are baby boomers, the board of 1CISP. But the management have insisted, sat down with the board, and said, “We have to do this. The people needs this. If you don’t implement this, we will resign because we did this.”

The senior management, the middle management, talked to the board heart-to-heart. I was happy with that. Because the culture that we have built, being a mutual, being a cooperative, valuing the communities where we operate, has been resonating internally in the organisation. It’s within the people in the organisation. I guess this is one of the things that we have to capitalise on as a cooperative, as a mutual to the young generations. Because they really appreciate organisations that have purpose, that serve the communities, that create impact to the majority of the population.

The younger generation is veering away from the material things. Material things that money can buy. But they want communities to be improved, people should be protected. Organisations that do this are being accepted, and being supported by the younger generation. For me, culture, equality has a very strong connection with the younger generation.

Liz Green:

Absolutely. I love that, Roy. That is just so inspiring, everything you’ve said. You’re right. I also see across our membership the value of having an engaged organisation that can allow people to stand up, and say what they think without fear to be heard. That’s a critical part.

Young people these days are feeling more, and more disenfranchised. Being able to be part of an organisation like yours must be really thrilling for them.

I know, Izak, you also have some comments on this.

Izak Smit:

Yeah. Liz, it’s so inspiring actually to listen to Roy, and to Andy. Just that piece that Roy mentioned about the younger generation, and employees, look, our staff complements about 1600 in the group at PPS. Many staff often say, “One of the reasons why I want to be at PPS is I’m just inspired by the purpose, and the whole mutual ethos. It gels with my personal values, and things like that.” That’s great to hear that from staff.

Andy, you said, they, like us, “to win the brokers.” It is. Your purpose, if that resonates with your staff, but also with the other stakeholders, and obviously with your members as well, then it’s very powerful. You start almost like swimming in your own blue ocean swim lane.

For example, Liz, our lapse rates in our live business is like 4 to 5%. It means the average member stays with us for almost like a generation, for 25 years, which is very, very low. In the industry year, I guess it’s probably similar in other countries as well. If you can get to single digit lapse rates on the life side, you think it’s pretty good. We are off that. Yeah. It’s the kind of businesses that society needs, and that society wants to win.

Then just to your question about at the end of the day, also the numbers, the KPIs, and all of that is important. The way we go about mutuality at PPS, I think it’s to some extent quite unique. All the profits eventually we give back to our members. But not in cash. It notionally builds up when they leave us. They can take it. Of course, at the end of the day, it is our capital. We don’t have a shareholder to go to.

But I tell you, those members watch the buildup of those profit share accounts every year. Some years, I must need to explain to them why it didn’t grow that much. Other years, it’s a very easy job to give our results. I think it is that balance that you asked about the commercial side, but also doing good. I think we have got quite a healthy balance.

Many of our members when they reach retirement, and so on, it’s quite a significant amount that has built up. That help them in their retirement years. Yeah, we’re usually showing our numbers, the number of members who become profiting millionaires.

Okay. Andy, that’s in the rands. That’s not in Canadian dollars.

Andy Taylor:

Okay. Still sounds impressive.

Izak Smit:

It’s just got a nice ring into it.

Liz Green:

Yes, exactly. Still on the subject of mutuality, we’ve talked a bit about how mutuality plays into our employee brand, and how as employers, it helps us with retention, and performance.

I’m fascinated. We talk a lot about marketing our mutuality, and the resonance that the mutuality has outside our organisations. I’m curious to know from all of you, in terms of, how does that fit? Are your other stakeholders outside of your organisations understanding mutuality? What are the challenges that you are facing, and that have you managed to overcome them or is this just something that really is much more of an employer brand that perhaps with brokers they’re closer, but beyond that, it’s too far a stretch? Who would like to talk to that first?

Andy Taylor:

I’m happy to kick things off, if you like.

Liz Green:

Great. Thanks, Andy.

Andy Taylor:

Yeah, it’s a great question. I think a couple of things that we did when we started Next Horizon, again, we really embedded mutuality in our strategy as a differentiating value proposition. We asked ourselves, “What’s really different about our organisation?” We’re actually a generalist P&C company, and we’re subscale. That’s a tricky spot to be in. But being a 185-year-old mutual company gives us something very unique.

That was the start of the journey for us in saying, “This is actually core. It’s fundamental to our strategy,” and the concept of purpose-driven, digitally-led. Then, “We recognise what you’re getting at, which is people don’t necessarily understand mutuality.” It’s something we all struggle with. How do we actually articulate that?

We started to talk a lot about being a modern mutual. That was the first phase of it. To say, “We’re actually modernising our business, and we’re digitally-led.” That was a brand we leaned on quite a bit. That’s evolved now to purpose. I think our best way of articulating mutuality now to the end customer, and to other stakeholders is to talk more about purpose, and the impact that our organisation can have outside of just insurance with all the other initiatives that we can do.

But I would agree with your opening comments, Liz, that I still believe that today, it’s very much an internal employee value proposition, and then it gets a bit stronger with a closer group of stakeholders. We still have a lot of work to do to get to the end consumer. But I do think it’s starting to gain traction for all the reasons that Izak, and Roy mentioned, how important it is to people. I’ll just stop there, and let the others comment. But I guess it’s been an evolution for us in terms of how that’s working. Yeah.

Liz Green:

Definitely.

Roy Miclat:

Yeah, I agree with Andy. 1CISP is 50 years old. That’s about one third of Andy’s organisation.

Andy Taylor:

I’m feeling old here. You’re making me feel that you are so young.

Roy Miclat:

Generally, mutual or cooperatives in the Philippines is still a challenge in terms of acceptance, but the Philippines has been influenced by a capitalist. The economy is really driven by capitalist mode. Unlike in Europe or other parts in Canada, that mutual or cooperatives are quite visible in terms of the economy.

In fact, in the Philippines, we are promoting cooperatives as the third path of the economy, private, public, and the mutuals and the cooperatives as the third path on the part of the economy. There’s still a lot more to do. But just like what Andy said, we have gotten far enough. We have achieved a lot. But we still have to do a lot, still so we can really promote mutuality in the general public, particularly in the Philippines, especially with the younger generations.

I think it would be easier now, just like what Andy said, that you can use digital technology, social media to popularise mutuals, and cooperatives. It’s more of how do we now strategize our organisation in terms of popularising it in a modern way, quote, unquote, “in a modern way.”

Because as a baby boomer, I am more inclined to discuss or to popularise things in terms of talking personally, face to face. That’s passe. Social media has been growing leaps and bounds. There are a lot of platforms that you can use. I think that we should be optimising this platform so we can push further what we have achieved in the last two, three decades of mutuality, and cooperation.

Liz Green:

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Roy. Yeah, talking of modern mutuality, Izak, I think you have a few points you’d like to add.

Izak Smit:

Yeah, Liz, I think probably it’s a bit easier on our side, because often you would ask our members, “What is mutuality?” They’ll say, “Listen, man, I’ve got a profit share account with PPS. It’s a bit more tangible, and so on.”

But as I’ve said earlier, it is wider than that. Still, I think new members joining us don’t appreciate it initially. Even the concept of our profit share account, and how it works, it takes a little bit of education, explanation, and just generally what’s the benefits of being a member of a mutual.

Lately, what we’ve started to do is we actually have a digital socialisation experience. New members joining us, new policyholders, we’ve gamified it. It’s quite fun. But they go through, and explore. It’s like in half an hour or whatever, they kind of understand it. But as I say, it’s a challenge for new members, I would imagine. It’s probably still a challenge for some intermediaries as well. Once they get it, they like it, and so on. But it is a bit of education piece there.

But then the other stakeholder in all of our lives, the regulators say. In South Africa, there were big demutualizations across the world in the ’90’s, the two very big industry organisations here, demutualized. Now, we are quite unique, which is nice as a differentiator. But when it comes to regulation, regulators sometimes forget about us. Then we have to say, “Look.” There’s also sometimes a bit of education to do.

In fact, the other day, our prudential regulator asked us to come to them to say, “Just explain again exactly how is your profit share account work and so on,” which is kind of very nice, because it helps in terms of the regulatory piece, which sometimes gets a bit left behind if you’re not just like all the other stock companies.

Liz Green:

Yeah, absolutely. Just on that point on regulation, I’ll throw this over to Andy, and to Roy, what experience have you had with explaining mutuality, and keeping mutuality in the right space with your regulators?

Roy Miclat:

Yeah. For me, I don’t have a problem with my regulators. I’ll share something that’s very amusing. The Insurance Commission of the Philippines has an employee’s cooperative. Their employee had created or organised a cooperative, because employees in the Philippines can organise a cooperative. They can be a member of an insurance cooperative.

Guess what? The employees of the Insurance Commission of the Philippines is a shareholder of 1CISP. How happy you are to be on my shoes, right?

Liz Green:

Oh, that’s wonderful.

Andy Taylor:

That’s great.

Roy Miclat:

I don’t have a problem with my regulators. They understand insurance cooperatives. They support us. In fact, some private insurers, they are envious, because when we submit a product for approval, about 10 to 15 days, it’s approved. For them, it would take them 45 days. But for 1CISP, the most would be 30 days. But on the average, it’s about 15 days. That’s an advantage for us. Because the regulators understand, and appreciate insurance cooperatives or mutuals.

We also have mutuals in the Philippines, and cooperative insurance are the biggest contributors in terms of insuring Filipinos. We contribute about 35% in terms of insuring under-insured Filipinos, where the private insurance doesn’t want to insure because of the risk. The regulator is happy because we contribute in terms of penetrating the population, increasing insurance penetration.

For us, in terms of the regulators in the Philippines, we don’t have any problem. It’s very manageable compared to other countries that we have spoke with, during ICMIF activities when I exchanged some ideas in terms of regulation. They said, “Oh, you are so lucky.”

Andy Taylor:

Yes, I would say you are. I do think you are lucky, Roy.

Just to add our view on it. I do think that regulators are supportive. They definitely support the mutual sector. They understand it. We used to, I would say in the early part of my career, we might’ve had more of the experience that you’ve articulated, where it was a bit easier maybe to get a filing approved, or certainly our relationship with our regulatory supervisor was very positive, and very collegial. That’s changed significantly in the last few years.

Again, in Canada there’s been significant increase in the amount of people that the regulators hired. We used to be able to use the concept of size, and complexity to say, “We’re not as complex as some of the larger organisations, our values are different, our risk profile is different,” and we were treated actually differently. Now, what we’re finding is that they’re holding us to the same bar as all of the large multinationals, and the public companies. There’s a lot of pressure, actually, on our internal teams with the demands that are coming from the regulators.

That actually is one of our market forces now saying that, “Actually, we need to get to scale the cost, and complexity of regulations, putting a lot of pressure on our organisation.” But I do think there’s still a positive view for sure on mutuals. But it’s changed significantly for us in the recent years.

Izak Smit:

Absolutely. If I can, maybe just on the topic of regulators, before we step off, to just share one experience. This is one of the benefits of belonging to ICMIF. Last year, when we were engaging also with the education piece with our local regulators, we asked Barry O’Dwyer from Royal London to come and share some of the UK experience with us. He was gracious enough to travel to South Africa.

Now, I think that kind of solidarity is unique to mutuals. Assisting us across the world, it was just awesome for somebody of Barry’s stature to actually willing to travel to South Africa, and to come. He also shared his experience. We had our board strategy session as well. But yeah, I think that kind of solidarity is amazing. It’s being part of ICMIF. Yeah, that’s a real value.

Liz Green:

Thank you. Thank you for calling that out.

Roy Miclat:

Yeah, last. In our centennial year in Rome, we asked our regulator to join the centennial celebration of ICMIF. They took part in the celebration of our integers, and attended all the sessions of our celebration. They were very appreciative of what the mutuals, and the cooperative insurers have done all over the world.

They told me that, “I think we should really expand cooperative insurers, and mutuals in the Philippines, because that is what Filipinos need, not the multinationals.” Now, we have a strong ally in the regulatory front.

Andy Taylor:

Fantastic.

Liz Green:

I love that. Obviously, with the United Nations Year of the Cooperative being in 2025, I’m very, very keen that ICMIF is there to support your organisations, and the rest of the network in terms of how you want to leverage that. You’ll be hearing from us very, very soon about that, and getting your ideas about what that looks like for next year.

Just coming on to not next year, we’re literally a few months away now from our biennial conference in Argentina. I know that we’re going to have teams from all your organisations there. Sadly, we’re not going to have Andy actually physically there, but I know you are sending a team, which is fabulous. Andy, we’ll meet up, and have a celebration, another time to look back on the conference.

Our theme is collaborating with purpose. We’ve already started talking about some of the collaborations that have happened that have really made an impact, but I’m keen to hear from any of you about what collaborating with purpose means in your organisation, and how ICMIF can support you in that. Would anybody like to go first?

Izak Smit:

Yeah, I’ll go quickly first.

Liz Green:

Thank you, Izak.

Izak Smit:

I think purpose is so core to mutuals. Of course, any business will say purpose, but I think mutuals, because we don’t have the shareholder, stakeholder also looking for a return, I think it’s more pure. It’s the reason why mutuals are founded today, because these people are coming together with purpose.

Liz, as I’ve said, we were so inspired two years ago in Rome. I think we are again going to be inspired in Buenos, Aires, just listening to all the stories across the world, and then challenging ourselves, how we live our purpose, as I’ve said, our purpose in reaching professional lives. To give it a nice ring, we often say to our members, “We want you to live the lives you want to live.”

Obviously, we’re going to support it from a financial angle, raging against catastrophes, and making provision for the future in terms of investments, and all the rest of it. But it’s more.

But I think that more often it’s the ideas from other parts of the world, also listening to other mutuals, what they are busy with. I think that we get a lot of inspiration from that. Looking very much forward to Buenos Aires.

Liz Green:

Brilliant.

Roy Miclat:

I want to share something, during COVID time in 2021. CISP has a huge amount of claims, really. Our bottom line was really very, very thin. Really, it dipped down to about 200%. When we have a shareholder’s meeting, you know what the member said? “We are not looking for profit. We are looking for your service. You are organised to protect us better. You paid your claim, rather than you did not pay your claim, and then boast of a big profit.” That really speaks a lot of being a mutual, being a cooperative.

Yes, I agree with Izak, that they expect that, “Ah, during my retirement, you have to support me,” everything. They know that. But when it comes to appreciating what’s the purpose of the organisation, the purpose of mutuals, and cooperatives, members, shareholders really understand why we were organised. In fact, Gore for 189 years, a hundred years of operation, if they don’t appreciate this organisation, you have shut down your business in the last 30 years. Shareholders really appreciate cooperative, and mutuals.

In terms of ICMIF, when I first attended an advance management seminar in 2017 in Manchester, there are few, really, the members now compared in 2017, it’s quite a lift in terms of numbers. That only shows that what ICMIF has been doing has been appreciated, and 1CISP is one of the beneficiaries of this support coming from ICMIF, especially also the mutuals in the Philippines.

Personally, I would like to thank ICMIF for that, for supporting the mutuals, and the cooperatives in the Philippines. We really appreciate your support. But in terms of purpose, our shareholders, our members, our stakeholders know that, and they appreciate the service that we provide.

I am sharing my experience in the Philippines, especially in the COVID time.

Liz Green:

Oh, what a wonderful example. Andy.

Andy Taylor:

Yeah. I couldn’t agree more. I think in my experience, there’s something unique about mutuals. Even though we actually compete in the same market, in ICMIF’s case, we’re global. But even in Canada, we share a common purpose, common view, common values. There’s always been an openness to support each other, help each other, and see if we can have a bigger impact together. I’ve always found that very refreshing when I’m meeting with mutuals.

ICMIF, I think, again, has taken that to the next level for us. We have tried really hard to stay engaged. I’m very sorry I can’t be at this amazing event. I have to be at a board meeting, so believe me, I’d much rather be with you, celebrating. But we will have our team in full force there. They’re excited to share, and participate in the event.

One of the things that we’re actually, I think, there’s even going to be a bit of an announcement there on one of the collaborations. I don’t want to steal the thunder, but we have been working on collaborations around the intersection between poverty, and equity. That’s an area that we feel very passionate about, and we are working with other mutuals on that initiative outside of our organisations to research, and understand the impact on Canadians, and society. Then there’s going to be initiatives that we jointly support coming out of that.

I know that our team’s going to share more about that at the event, so I don’t want to steal their thunder. But just another example of where mutuals are coming together to have an impact much bigger than just within our organisations, and supporting each other. I echo the comments from Izak, and Roy.

I just really appreciate the support of ICMIF. I do agree. It’s kind of gone to a next level. We really like to look around the globe, see what others are doing, how they’re leading, and sharing. We see a tonne of value in that. Thank you very much.

Liz Green:

What a wonderful way for us to end our discussion. There’s a lot of love, and warmth, I think, across our network during these challenging times that we continue to struggle with. All we can say is ICMIF Secretariat, we feel honoured to serve you as great leaders. We will continue to do our best to meet your strategic challenges, and also to promote your wonderful competencies in your organisations.

For both Roy, and Izak, I look forward to seeing you in Buenos, Aires. Andy, we will see you very soon. We have a lot of events coming up in the next few months, and years to come. That sounds like an opportunity to see you. We’ll obviously be in Canada very soon, too.

For those of you who’ve been enjoying this session today, please do check out our previous sessions. We’ve had three other panel sessions, which have got lots of interesting discussion, diversity, challenge, and opportunity in them. Also, please do look on our Knowledge Hub, which has many, many other resources that you can search in. That’s all part of your member benefit.

Thank you for your attention. One more time, thank you so much to Roy, Andy, and Izak for giving up their valuable time. Thank you all, and please have a wonderful day. Take care. Until next time. Bye-bye.

Roy Miclat:

See you in Buenos Aires.

Andy Taylor:

Take care. Thank you, guys.