Utmost Wealth is sponsoring the award for Young Achiever of the Year at this year’s Isle of Man Newspapers’ Awards for Excellence.

We spoke to chief executive, Mike Foy, about a changing identity and how it has impacted on his own ’young achievers’.

’We have a lot of youngsters in the company: around 35% of our 200 employees are under 30, which I class as young!

’They’re all bright young things and we have to try to find new ways to harness that enthusiasm.

’We like to promote from within where we can which typically means we are recruiting younger people and training them so most of our intake tends to be at the younger level.

’Our changing brand has forced us to think differently. We’re trying to break some of the norms as employers and think how some things might be done differently,’ says Mike Foy.

He goes on: ’We’ve started taking undergraduates from UCM, taking them in then giving them some support through their academic years, obviously with the hope that when they finish and graduate they might come and join us permanently.

’We have three at the moment and we’ve found they think in a very different and fresh way so it’s working very well.

’There are also a lot of youngsters in the company who are doing community work and sports. We have a couple who were part of the Island Games team and won gold and bronze medals so we’ve got youngsters who are achieving outside of the business as well.’

He adds: ’We must keep encouraging people to stay on the Isle of Man and more young people to come over and live.

’Let’s make the island a place where youngsters want to stay and bring up families and work.

’As an employer we have a huge vested interest in the Isle of Man being a successful economy and staying somewhere where people want to live and work because we all get the benefit from that.’

Utmost Wealth is, itself, still a young company. It’s not quite a year since it made the change from being an autonomous part of the AXA group to becoming an independent Manx company with a fresh new name and branding.

’We’re more of a boutique brand now, offering bespoke solutions for customers. ’We’re more responsive and flexible and a bit different,’ is how Mike characterises their new identity.

Utmost Wealth, and previously as AXA, has been a long-time sponsor of the Awards for Excellence.

Mike says: ’The awards are such a celebration of the diversity of the Isle of Man.

’It’s great that they’re not all just pure business awards: there’s also the Volunteer Award, Young Achiever, Charity Cultural and Social Awards and that makes it an Isle of Man celebration rather than just another business ceremony.

’And small businesses can win an award as well as the company that employs 500 people.’

Mike likes to take staff along to the awards night and this year, in keeping sponsoring the Young Achiever award, they will be choosing high flyers from their under-30s to join the Utmost Wealth table for dinner at the Villa.

Mike says: ’We always use the dinner as a staff celebration.

’It’s become the event of the year and it’s such a good night that everyone who comes along says afterwards: "I hope we’re in with a chance for next year".

’It has become an Isle of Man celebration which seems to trump every other dinner and award ceremony and I think the youngsters we take along this year will find it really inspiring.’