Melbourne insurance identity Rodney Benjamin died last month at 82.

He was well known as an insurance expert and the author of the 1988 book Paths to Professionalism: A History of Insurance Broking in Australia.

Mr Benjamin started work as an office boy at Edward Lumley & Sons in Melbourne, where his late father had been MD. Rodney Benjamin rose to become Victorian MD and then a director of Lumley Australia before retiring in 1981 for health reasons.

He set up an insurance consultancy in 1982, and appeared as an expert witness in several high-profile law cases over the next decade. During his career he was also president of the Insurance Institute of Victoria (1973), and chaired the Victorian advisory board of the Insurance Council of Australia and the Victorian Workers’ Compensation Insurers Advisory Committee.

In 1978 he was made an honorary life member of the Australian Insurance Institute (the forerunner of the Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance).

In retirement he went to university and gained a BA, MA and a PhD in economic history. He also wrote several histories centred on Victoria’s Jewish community.

In 1999 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to the Jewish community and the insurance industry.

Mr Benjamin is survived by his wife of 61 years, Carmel, four children and seven grandchildren. His son Paul, Victorian State Manager at IC Frith & Associates, is the third generation of the family to work in insurance.

“My father was self-made and self-motivated,” Paul Benjamin told insuranceNEWS.com.au.

“His legacy for the insurance industry was that we provide a better service for our clients by being better educated.”