Quick question. What conference do you find sandwiched between the start of the cricket season and the end of the football season? The BIBA conference of course and this year it returns to the ExCel in London.

With perfect timing (as usual) we have managed to bag an interview with the brand spanking new Chief Executive, Steve White. Steve (pictured on the cover) talks us through the transition from Eric Galbraith’s reign as well as laying out the future plans he has for the association.

Jamie Marchant (right), our friendly insurance marketing and communications specialist, casts his beady eye over market cycles. His fear is that the hard lessons learned from the soft commercial market of ten years ago have been far too easily forgotten.

One market that is less affected by soft markets and recession is the art and collectables sector. Insurance People managed to get the low down on the current market from Richard (left) & Lynden Norman, Technical Line Manager and Underwriter respectively at Markel. They have over 30 years experience between them in this sector and explain that, you can’t really expect to succeed in this market unless you have the same enthusiasms as the owners do for the property you are insuring.

Another man who displays great enthusiasm for collecting is Reg Brown (right). Last month this well-known insurance man and deltiologist demonstrated his passion for collecting postcards of yesteryear. This month he takes us on another postcard journey to just before the Great War with depictions of “mess time” at Guardian Insurance.

It was at around that time that Stuart Freeborn (left) joined the human race but you won’t find him in any insurance postcards. In our regular ‘one that got away’ feature, you will find that Stuart’s father being an insurance broker simply made him more determined to get into a new market which, at the time, was considered to have very little future – the movies.

Finally, Andrew Newman, the Insurance People Editor, in his ‘On The Road’ feature decides to go ‘Up The Exchange’ and pay homage to a building that has never felt the need to be taller than the upstarts popping up all around it.

As always, industry experts write the features in Insurance People, which means you get insights that you simply can’t find anywhere else. Insurance People really is bought to you by insurance people: To secure your printed copy register today!