Blem celebrate 20th Anniversary
50 guests joined us last evening to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of our incorporation. A good evening was had by all and Managing Director Gavin Blem gave the following short speech:
Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends and Colleagues
Thank you for joining us this evening to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Blem Information Management’s incorporation. Some of you have travelled a significant distance and I appreciate you all being here.
I started the company in early October 1987, just a couple of weeks before Storm 87J and Black Monday. So not a great time to start a business, but it gave me an immediate sense that if we can make it through this, we can make it through anything. We managed to ride the wave of emerging information technology very successfully and we were soon applying it to both clients and our advantages. Finding the need for something like XLRAS in the early 1990’s was a stroke of luck, but selling it to the City in the early days was a real struggle as it used something really strange called “Windows” and often the biggest objection was that it used a “mouse”. Fortunately we’ve all moved on somewhat since then having acquired proficient mouse skills. We all survived the Y2K damp squib, been through the dot com bubble and now we all spend a significant portion of our daily lives in cyberspace, emailing, catching up with the news and events, and bending our “flexible friend”, by which I mean the credit card, in case some here are too young to remember "Access".
It was also technology that allowed us to embark earlier this year on a long held ambition of mine to sail round Britain. Having made sure that we could keep an eye on the business and with David holding the fort, we set off up the east coast on the 1st of April. Highlights of the trip included a midnight sail over the shallow sand bar into Wells next the sea on the north Norfolk coast. There were crashing breakers just 5m either side of us and we were being propelled at speed in pitch dark through a channel we could only just make out. Secondly being escorted by a dozen or more dolphins near Peterhead, and similarly memorable the long beat up the Firth of Forth to pass below the great rail and road bridges, which were, as expected being painted! In any event, the journey is not over as our boat is safely out the water and prepared for winter in the idyllic setting of Oban on the west coast of Scotland. Subject to work demands, we’ll be returning there next year to complete the circumnavigation.
Where next? Well, the London market is finally embracing data standards that will deliver even greater efficiency and turnaround for clients. I think the London market’s continued transformation will ensure that it remains at the centre of our global market. XLRAS.Net is waiting in the wings, ready to play its part for many years to come and I see XLRAS4 continuing to meet the needs of its clients for the foreseeable future.
There are many people in this room who are directly responsible for where we have been and where we are going. Sally, thank you for looking after things on both the business and domestic fronts so well. This is often the only way I can achieve the focus necessary to solve the complexities that reinsurance regularly presents, and your endless patience and support is precious. Thank you David for your loyalty, hard work and skill, there’s a lot I couldn’t have done without you and we make a great team. During the evening I hope to thank each of you personally, but in case I don’t, I am saying a very big thank you now to all of you. Thank you for believing in XLRAS and us, thank you for your patience when the pressure has been on and thank you for using XLRAS and helping to continuously drive it forward to meet your new requirements.
As a small token of my appreciation, please don’t leave without collecting a box of delicious chocolates. In conclusion, may I propose a toast to the next 20 years. May they bring continuing peace, prosperity, health and happiness to us all.
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