Background
AURIMS is a forum for those people involved in Risk Management and Insurance in Universities to share with other members their experience and solutions to common issues. AURIMS believes it would be most beneficial to have at least one representative from each University in Australasia in order to have the broadest membership and thus expertise base as possible.
AURIMS comprises employees responsible for insurance and/or risk management in their respective institutions and currently has more than 70 members from almost 50 universities in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. It was formed late in 1999, and arose from the Victorian Universities Insurance Group which was established in 1995 to discuss common insurance and risk management issues on a regular basis.
Members include a wide range of people responsible for insurance including:
- Finance – Vice Presidents, Directors, Managers & Officers
- Accountants of various types (including Internal Auditors)
- Operations, Business and Facilities Managers
- Assets Managers and Officers
- Risk Management & Insurance – Directors, Managers & Officers
Meetings are held quarterly - in the past one has been held at a university in Melbourne, one at a Sydney University and one is held just prior to Unimutual's Annual Conference and Workshop, while the main AURIMS meeting for the year is the annual two day conference in May. The quarterly meetings generally commence at 10am and conclude at about 3.30pm, with a light lunch being provided by the host University. The date and location of the next meeting can be viewed by clicking the "Meetings" icon at the left of this page.
There are no membership application or annual fees, other than for delegates attending the annual conference. Some members have indicated whilst they are unable to travel to quarterly meetings they will instead rely on the agenda and minutes (emailed to all members) to keep them up to date with AURIMS activities, and will endeavour to attend the Annual Conference if possible.
Topics discussed at past meetings have included:
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Annual two day conferences have been held in May each year as follows:-
2000 - La Trobe University, Melbourne
2001 - University of New South Wales
2002 - Monash University, Melbourne
2003 - University of Sydney
2004 - University of Canberra
2005 - Bond University, Queensland
2006 -Massey University, Auckland Campus, New Zealand
2007 - University of Adelaide
Presenters are generally drawn from members and external service providers. Topics have included:
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The AURIMS listserv is accessible via the AURIMS website (www.latrobe.edu.au/aurims). The listserv can be very useful as members can ask questions and raise issues to the broad membership by email. It is highly likely that a problem just experienced by one member has already been faced by another member, and learning how they addressed the matter could be beneficial in determining the best approach to adopt - this is the value of the listserv.
There are a number of other areas where university employees meet regularly to discuss common interests, and these include Finance, Solicitors, Building (Physical Facilities), OH&S, Security, Auditors, Purchasing, Student Accommodation and Sports Associations. Most of these groups are Australia-wide though a few are restricted to within a state.
Some members have suggested that AURIMS could be affiliated with Unimutual or AON, as these two organisations provide insurance services to the majority of universities in Australia. However, not all university risk and insurance personnel have the opportunity of attending Unimutual’s annual conference (and they don’t hold quarterly meetings), and it has been decided that insurance brokers handling insurance requirements for universities cannot become members.