Scottish Insurance Head’s Visit

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30982, 11 February 1966, Page 12

Scottish Insurance Head’s Visit

Lord Polwarth, deputychairman of the General Accident Fire and Life Assurance Corporation, arrived in Christchurch yesterday for his first tour of New Zealand branch offices and to attend the opening ceremony for the company’s new 12-storey, £500,000 building in Wellington. The corporation was founded in Perth, Scotland, 77 years ago, and has grown to be the third largest British insurance company in general insurance. Lord Polwarth said that the company had been operating in New Zealand since 1925 and was now doing more than £lm worth of business in New Zealand each year. Although this was a small part of the corporation’s total world business (nearly £l2om last year), the New Zealand growth rate was above the world average. Over the last five years, the corporation’s New Zealand business had grown by 75 per cent Lord Polwarth would not say what development plans his corporation had for New Zealand, or whether it planned to build its own office in Christchurch. “Ask me at the end of our tour,” he said. He also planned to call on officers of the Reserve Bank and private banks in his capacity as DeputyGovernor of the Bank of Scotland. Lord Polwarth, who is chairman of the Scottish Council (for development and industry) said he would fol-

low up the results of the Scottish trade mission which visited New Zealand last year. “We are anxious to do as much business as possible here,” he said. “But it depends on your controls and restrictions on imports. As well as the traditional whisky.

textiles, and foods, Scotland is now producing a wide range of electronic equipment, machinery, cars and trucks.” Describing himself as a part-time sheepfarmer (he runs sheep on the ancient family estate near Hawick). Lord Polwarth said he hoped to find time to visit a friend who had a farm at Little River.