Richard Cronin of Friends Life
Employer and area of work
Friends Life, financial reporting.
How would your best friend describe you?
Not pretty but effective!
What motivates you?
To do my best all of the time. Anything less than 100% means I've wasted an opportunity.
What would be your personal motto?
Nobody ever wants to do things they don't enjoy so it is best to find a way of enjoying everything.
Name five dream guests you would invite to your dinner party?
The chiefs of the NHS, NAO and HMRC versus Private Eye's Ian Hislop could make for a lively discussion. For the fifth, I'd invite author and systems thinker John Seddon to talk to while the others bickered.
What's your most 'actuarial' habit?
Reading everything I write several times over to make sure it cannot be misinterpreted by anybody.
Favourite Excel function?
SUMIFS
How do you relax away from the office?
Orienteering and fell-running. Mud, rain, snow, brambles I'd run through anything.
Alternative career choice?
Geotechnical engineering sounds fun. I could look at landslides all day.
Tell us something unusual about yourself
For each census I have lived in a different but adjacent county. I now have only eight years left to decide where to move to next!
Greatest risk you have ever taken?
Running down a steep hill without watching my footing. Cartwheeling 100m was by all accounts quite a spectacle, but my shoulder wasn't happy.
What's your most treasured possession?
My compass. Quite literally I'd be lost without it!
What are the top three things you would like to achieve in your lifetime?
Learn to speak Welsh, explore Eastern Europe and Russia to trace where my family came from, and become a top athlete - naturally!
If you ruled the world, what would you change first?
I'd change the rules of succession then resign before the power corrupted me.
