THE JN Group has shifted JN General Insurance CEO Christopher Hind and replaced him with Dr Dana Morris Dixon, effective Monday, in a move which left staff shocked but one that was necessary according to Earl Jarrett, co-deputy chairman and CEO of the JN Group.

“In corporations like these you sometimes have movements across the group. We are going through a series of musical chairs where people are being moved around;Chris is one and there are others to come. We will be moving around other executives in the next few weeks,” Jarrett told the Jamaica Observer.

Jarret said Hind will take up an executive role in the JN Group but declined to say what role that will be. He however said the company is facing “a myriad of challenges with interest rates going up, inflation rising and staff challenged with their salaries.

“I hear the rumours in the streets that JN not performing well and we are doing what is necessary to get that performance up,” he explained.

“What’s happening is that the whole claims management process is being revamped. We outsourced some of the claims management procedures to an external provider and as a result of that, there was a need for redundancies in that specific area.”

Jarrett told the Business Observer that claims have been a challenge for JNGI. Like most other insurance companies, the entity has been facing fraudulent claims. A recent report in this newspaper indicated that of over $60 billion in insurance claims, insurers believe a significant portion is fraudulent but say it is hard to prove because of a network of doctors, lawyers and police working together.

“The change we [are] making at JNGI is to manage the claims side closer. Chris has been there [at the helm of JNGI] for 15 years, he’s done a good job over that period, but sometimes it’s good to have a fresh pair of eyes to look at the issues.”

Jarrett said the announcement was made to staff on Monday.

“The staff were shocked because they only heard yesterday [Monday], and in fact they were very silent [when the change was announced], so we tried to get them to comment by posing hypothetical situations to them to get their views. I wish there was another way to have done it [make the announcement].”

He said in the old days of Jamaica National “If you go back to look at the records, we used to have a constant shifting around of the executives and in the last 15 to 20 years we have not done that, but that’s what we are heading back to.”

JNGI, which leads the general insurance sector by assets, was transformed by Hind, his Linkedin profile indicates.

The CEO inherited an under-performing, labour-intensive, mass motor underwriter and transformed the portfolio to a higher-value book of business that focused on large corporate accounts and profitable motor underwriting.

This turnaround stabilised the business, resulting in the brand being one of the most trusted names in the field among customers, brokers and reinsurers.