Neil Mills
Dynamic City insurance broker and lay preacher who commanded motor torpedo boats in the war
NEIL MILLS, who has died aged 93, became a leader of the City insurance market as chairman of Sedgwick, after dashing wartime service in motor torpedo boats. Mills began his insurance broking career with the small firm of Bland Welch in 1948, becoming a director in 1955. The self-confidence and determination acquired under fire as a naval officer helped him win a reputation as a man to be reckoned with in the Lloyd’s market in which he placed his clients’ business – and where he was known to some as “the Pope”, on account of his other life as a lay preacher in the diocese of Winchester and vice chairman of the Church Army.
Bland Welch became a subsidiary of the merchant bank Samuel Montagu, whose directors chose Mills in 1965, at 42, to be chairman of the broking firm. Rapid expansion followed, and in due course Mills persuaded Montagu to buy the reinsurance business of E W Payne to create a more diversified group. He became chairman of Bland Payne in 1974; after Montagu was itself acquired by Midland Bank, he also joined the board of Midland.
It was an era of consolidation across the insurance sector. After abortive talks to sell Bland Payne to Marsh & McLennan, a New York broker with which Mills had a long connection, marriage was arranged instead with a London rival, Sedgwick Forbes – and again Mills emerged as chairman, despite hostility which manifested itself in a refusal to allow his office furniture from Bland Payne to be installed in Sedgwick’s headquarters. It was driven round the City in a removal van until Mills forcefully resolved the impasse.
By now a commanding figure in the insurance world, Mills was convinced that the future lay with a small number of “mega-brokers” capable of servicing the insurance needs of multinational clients, rather than a plethora of lesser firms: “This is the day of the big boys.” After the Sedgwick-Bland Payne deal in 1979 he immediately pursued a tie-up with another US firm, Alexander & Alexander, which would have created a global giant – but the two sides failed to reach terms. Nevertheless, by the time he retired at the end of 1984, the Sedgwick group he had built by dynamic leadership and successive mergers was a powerful player in its international marketplace.
Neil McLay Mills was born at Sidcup on July 29 1923. His parents were Plymouth Brethren and his father worked for a time for the Fiat car company, but suffered mixed financial fortunes. Neil was educated at Epsom College, leaving in 1940 to join the Royal Navy under the “Y scheme” for young officers.
After initial training in HMS Collingwood at Portsmouth – where he acquired the nickname “Freddie”, after the boxer Freddie Mills, which stayed with him throughout the war – Mills spent a grim winter in the destroyer Paladin on Russian convoy duty. Among his memories was the sight of seamen from sunken ships “floating on rafts frozen to death”.
His next posting was with Coastal Forces in a motor torpedo boat, rescuing pilots shot down over the Channel. As a midshipman in 1942 he joined MTB656, a so-called “Dog boat” (Fairmile D motor torpedo boat, carrying three officers and 18 crew) which sailed for the Mediterranean – where he saw almost constant action until the end of the war.
As second in command of MTB656 in encounters with German supply ships and Italian warships in the Strait of Messina, Mills suffered a serious shrapnel wound in the leg. After recuperation he returned to service in motor gun boats operating to disrupt German supply lines in the Adriatic under a highly decorated daredevil Canadian commander, Douglas Maitland.
Promoted first lieutenant, the 21-year-old Mills effectively commanded Maitland’s vessel MGB657 while Maitland himself directed their flotilla in daring raids and fierce skirmishes. Mills was mentioned in despatches in 1944 “for outstanding courage, skill and determination in attacks with enemy shipping in light coastal craft”. MGB657 later struck a mine which blew off her stern and killed several crew including the coxswain beside Mills on the bridge.
He went on to command two more motor torpedo boats in the Med and a minesweeper in the North Sea before demobilisation. He then embarked on a law degree at University College London, but his father’s financial straits forced him to abandon his studies and accept the offer of a trainee broker’s position at Bland Welch.
Latterly Mills was a vice president of the Insurance Institute of London and the British Insurance Brokers Association. Beyond the City he was a member of the council of Oak Hill theological college and a governor of Treloar’s school for disabled young people in Hampshire, for which he led a very successful appeal. He described his deep religious faith in adult life as a “reconversion”, in part inspired by the evangelical preacher Billy Graham.
He married Rosamund Kimpton, a granddaughter of the 1st Lord Hazelrigg, in 1950; she survives him with their two sons and two daughters. Neil Mills, born July 29 1923, died March 3 2017