Two well-known insurance industry leaders, with a collective 40 years’ experience, have joined Crawford Australia’s property loss adjusting teams in Sydney and Adelaide.
Diana Abel joined Crawford this week as the claims management company’s new Sydney Operations Manager, leading a large team of claims adjusters looking after various property claims on behalf of a range of insurers. Her appointment comes just weeks after Ryan Peacock became Metro Operations Manager covering both Adelaide and Perth.
Head of Property Scott Shepherd said these roles were critical for the smooth day-today operation of Crawford’s high-volume property claim portfolio across the greater Sydney region as well as the Adelaide and Perth metro areas.
“While Diana joins us following several years as the General Manager of an independent building firm servicing the insurance industry, her professional passion is leading an operational team, so this puts her in an excellent position to take on this operational role with us here at Crawford.
“Diana is highly skilled when it comes to both leadership and technical claims judgement. She spent nine years with Westpac General Insurance becoming its National Claims Manager leading a team of claims managers, and also spent five years with another large loss adjusting company, managing one of its Sydney metro branch offices,”
Shepherd said.
Highly regarded within insurance circles in South Australia, Peacock was most recently Claims Performance Manager at Terri Scheer Insurance, Suncorp.
“Ryan’s 18-year career, predominantly with Suncorp, has seen him develop a reputation as a solutions-focused, customer centric operator. He’s led various teams in his time and is known for creating an environment that promotes individual and team excellence,” Shepherd said.
He also noted that while Crawford has a strong history of promoting from within, it remained important for the company to balance internal promotions with recruiting fresh talent.
“For us, it’s always about ‘who is the best person for the job’ and quite often that’s an internal person because we do have solid training platforms for our people to grow and develop. However, there are invaluable benefits that come as a result of external appointments – people from outside bring a fresh perspective, new ideas, promote diversity of thought and all these things aid in evolving and improving our service delivery and client experience.
“When we announced these appointments internally, people were genuinely excited because both Diana and Ryan have strong reputations in their respective States for developing and implementing a whole range of initiatives for greater claims customer service and doing it in a way that’s inspiring for the teams they lead,”
Shepherd said.
Ms Abel commented: “It’s always a big personal decision to decide to shift companies, but I’m very optimistic about this next career chapter.
“Crawford has been such a name in the market for a long time, so to grow my career with a brand like Crawford is exciting and I’m looking forward to getting into the thick of it which I’m sure won’t take long given the huge volume of claims being worked through as a result of the wild weather that’s lashed eastern Australia this year.”
