Claims professionals and senior industry executives will gather in Sydney on July 5 for the second Mansfield Awards for Claims Excellence.

The awards were conceived and are managed by Insurance News and claims services specialist LMI. The initial event last year attracted a large number of industry executives to see four awards handed out for SME, Specialty and Corporate, and Chubb Insurance was the overall winner.

Categories and the number of awards will be unchanged this year.

Insurance News Publisher Terry McMullan says the organisers decided to make the awards an annual event on the insurance calendar following a “very positive” response from industry professionals.

“We didn’t really know how they would be received, but we believe in the need to recognise claims excellence and it turned out a lot of other people do too.”

He says there have been calls for the awards categories to be expanded, “but we won’t until we can work out accurate ways to measure companies’ performance in other classes”.

The Mansfield Awards, which are named after the English Lord Chief Justice who introduced the concept of utmost good faith to the insurance process in 1766, are calculated using official reports and surveys conducted by LMI, with the results weighted to ensure all insurers are viewed equally.

Steadfast and NSW Insurance and Care (icare) have again announced their intention to sponsor the awards, and additional sponsors are being sought.

Mr McMullan says this year’s program will be based on last year’s successful event, with the emphasis on being “short and sharp with time left over to network”.