Themes and agendas for the coming year are as popular with organizations in the U.K. as they are in the United States. However, events have a nasty habit of hijacking attention so that planned discussions suddenly veer off to focus on an issue such as terrorism.This proved to be the case when the Association of Insurance and Risk Managers assembled at the British seaside town of Brighton in June.

Its chairman for the past year, Andrew Cornish, stated at the outset that delegates would hear much about transparency in the wake of the Spitzer allegations.Against a background of increasing opposition to further European integration, they also heard broadsides against Brussels and its plans to review the financial services industry, as well as proposed company audit reforms deemed even more onerous than Sarbanes-Oxley.

Also high on the agenda were the changed ranking of issues that now preoccupy British risk managers and predictions on which are most likely to enter their radar over the next five years.AIRMIC set up a task force last November to monitor whether broker business practices were changing voluntarily after Eliot Spitzer's assault on insurance brokers and carriers. The association wanted to avoid any "knee-jerk reaction," said Cornish. There have been improvements in recent months, but they have not gone far enough.