Arslan Hannani, 28, is the head of private clients in the Middle East for Zurich, which insures some of the wealthiest people’s possessions in the UAE. The company’s private clients division caters to the insurance needs of ultra-high net worth individuals’ for their collections of cars, homes, jewellery, fine art, yachts and travel. Mr Hannani, who is from Sweden, speaks about how the insurer helps its customers when the worst happens.
5.30am
When the weather is this good I love getting up and playing nine holes in the morning. I am an avid golfer, albeit not a very good one, but I try.
9am
I get to the office. The first thing is always emails. They could be from customers or talking to the team about what is happening in the division. We try to build insurance policies around clients’ needs and requirements. As you imagine, if someone has a US$4 million or $5m collection of art … it is not appropriate to take an off-the-shelf policy. They need something built around them.
10am
At least once a week I have a call with our claims team. We recently had a great piece of news. One of our clients had a limited edition $80,000 Audemars Piguet gold watch. While he was on a business trip in Johannesburg unfortunately he was held at gunpoint and it was taken off him. We highlighted to Audemars Piguet that this watch had been stolen. A few months later we got a call from Audemars Piguet in Miami – of all places – saying “guys we found your watch. It was brought in for a service. We realised it was stolen so we confiscated it”. When we handed it back to the client he was absolutely ecstatic … He gave us the same cheque back that we had given him in compensation when it was stolen. He had not cashed it for about four or five months.
10.45am
I am back to my desk for my least favourite part of the day, which is replying to emails and looking at Excel sheets and making sure we are on track.
12 noon
Lunch. Last week I had a lunch with one of our partners. We were discussing building a proposition for a high-end vehicle owners’ club … for car insurance but will extend to home and yacht and travel insurance as well. I used to do the same thing [for Zurich] in the United Kingdom. Over there you tend to see the richer the clients are they tend to spend their money on one significant thing. I have seen people who live in a studio or a one bedroom in London but have two Ferraris, vice versa someone who has $10m worth of art but drives a Toyota Prius. Here in the Middle East, we find that people tend to spend on multiple vices, if you can call it that. This is a fantastic market for the kind of stuff we do.
1.30pm
I am back in the office for a bit. I speak to our offices in Europe because they are awake. I had a pretty interesting call last week. One of our clients is taking a few of his cars to Europe. It is quite a high-end Ferrari but he is going on a tour of Europe. He will be based in London. It is quite tricky sometimes with those things because we have to make sure if he breaks down on the motorway, what happens?
Mid afternoon
I sometimes go out to clients. I went along with one of our risk managers to visit one of our existing clients recently. This client has added about $500,000 of art to his collection. We have seen a jewellery collection upwards of $100m, which was phenomenal to see. My personal favourite is a 110 car collection, classic cars all of them, ranging from some of the rarest in the world, which are worth upwards of $2m or $3m in value each.
6pm
I leave the office. We have a strong presence in the Dubai art scene. We insure a lot of the galleries. So a couple of nights a week, especially during winter, I try see a couple of the galleries or events and we meet a lot of our clients there as well.
9pm
I am back home. I am a secret avid PlayStation fan and I like to play in the evening.
11.30pm
One thing I have picked up in the last few months is to go through my calendar for the next day right before I go to bed. Apparently your mind subconsciously plans ahead for the meetings for the next day. It is working quite well because I wake up fresher, less stressed and I know exactly what is ahead of me in the morning.
business@thenational.ae
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