Suncorp Metway General Insurance Group GM Daniel Wilkie is scheduled to be a high-profile witness at the HIH Royal Commission in the next week as it probes the thinking behind FAI’s controversial financial reinsurance contracts.

Mr Wilkie, who was FAI’s MD for general insurance in the late 1990s, is expected to add to the information being compiled by the Royal Commission about who did what when and why. 

The commission’s lawyers are playing their cards close to their chests, but it’s becoming obvious they are trying to establish just how much directors and the most senior executives in FAI and HIH knew about the contracts, and whether they understood just what the contracts were intended to do.

Guy Carpenter reinsurance broker John Tuckfield had a torrid time in the hot seat last week as he was grilled over the fine details of the contracts, the major players and even what he meant by such phrases as “secret squirrel” – a passing comment on an email that he said on Friday he would remember for the rest of his life.

Yesterday and today are being taken up by Stephen Burroughs, who was FAI’s group reinsurance manager in 1998, and Ross Littlewood, who was then and remains Hannover Re’s senior executive in Australia.

Apart from Mr Wilkie, other witnesses provisionally listed for examination during this phase of the inquiry include FAI’s Roger Colomb, Robert Baulderstone, Nirin Peiris and Geoffery Trehair.

HIH executives Ray Gosling, Federick Lo, Paul Abela, Effy Dimos, Peter Thompson and Rob Martin are also scheduled to appear in this phase of the investigation, with APRA and Arthur Andersen witnesses following.

This week the Royal Commission will only sit until tomorrow afternoon. It intends to sit from Monday to Friday over the following three weeks. There’s a lot of ground to cover, with the commission scheduled to report to Parliament in June. According to some Royal Commission observers – of whom there are many – an extension to the timeframe could probably be arranged.