From the desk of Murray Bruce, Managing Director

March and April was conference season for us. In late March, Brooke, Jessica, Chris and myself attended ADX18, the largest conference of its type for dentists and suppliers to the dental industry.

Brooke, Chris, Murray and Jessica, ADX18

Held at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition centre in Darling Harbour the convention attracted over 10,000 attendees and 500 exhibitors over three days. ADX18 was a fantastic opportunity for us to meet with many of our current dental clients as well as talk to many others who hopefully soon will be clients.

The conference was hard work for the team with long days manning the stand possibly not helped by yours truly attempting to save on accommodation costs by renting an Airbnb in Darlington. Whilst Darlington is a fantastic inner city suburb of Sydney it shares a border with Redfern which can get a little rowdy at night. It was with a little embarrassment that I had to purchase earplugs for the team to ensure they could get a good night’s sleep.

In April, Kelly and I attended the Steadfast conference held by our insurance broking group and the largest in Australia. Whilst not quite as big as ADX18 the Steadfast conference is also a big event with many insurance industry exhibitors and world class presenters.

It was exciting to see new new technology solutions coming to market, coined “InsureTech”. InsureTech, like FinTech is just industry being more accepting of technology in order to make life easier for customers. Some highlights for me were Travel Card a new travel insurance solution that enables instant claims settlement via an insurer issued card whilst overseas. Another was ‘Blue Zebra’ which is a home, motor and home business insurance product wrapped into one policy and underwritten using data from 15 different sources.  Also Corporate Health Insurance discounts now available to our clients through NIB. You’ll be hearing more about these and other exciting new products from the team in coming months.

Finally one key learning for me from both conferences was to read the dress code for functions more carefully. It seems that conferences like to have a formal event on the agenda and unfortunately I didn’t pack formal wear for either! Not a good look for the managing director.