Roy Brace from TheMIGroup is stepping down from his role as vice president, global moving services support, to involve himself more with special projects for the company. His current role will be performed by Andy Neall.

Roy started working with TheMIGroup on 15 May, 1979.  Initially he fulfilled a sales and surveying role before becoming the assistant general manager for Rod Hopkins in Toronto.  In the early 1990s Roy was the general manager of the company’s Vancouver branch before becoming the Executive Vice President for the Canadian region.  In 1999 he moved to New York as the executive vice president for the seven US States of the Eastern Region. 

After a subsequent business re-organisation, Roy took on the role of vice president of client services for the Eastern Region before later assuming the role for which he was best known worldwide as the group’s front man, looking after its global network of agents.

“When I took over we had far too many agents,” said Roy.  “So I set about getting the number of partners down to a more manageable level.  This way we were able to send a decent volume of traffic to all the agents and build true partnerships with them.  It worked very well.”

For many years now TheMIGroup has acted as a Relocation Management Company (RMC) rivalling organisations such as Cartus and Brookfield.  “Our partners are loyal to us and we are loyal to them,” said Roy.  “If we ever have a problem, we work with them to sort it out.  We think that’s the best long-term policy, helping us to build stable relationships and maintain the highest quality service.”

During his career Roy has particularly enjoyed two aspects of his work: running a business unit and meeting people around the world. “When I was a general manager I had 40-50 staff I worked with every day,” he said.  “We worked together as a team to build the business and create our own success.  It was a very exciting time.”

But it is being around people that Roy enjoys most, building relationships and making friends around the globe on the telephone or by attending conventions.  “This is a people business,” he said.  “It was most rewarding for me to go to conventions all over the world and pretty much know everybody.”   Roy’s extended team stretched to over 100 providers that he managed and cared for with compassion and integrity.

Roy’s position has now been filled by Andy Neall who is also well known worldwide and has been with TheMIGroup for many years.  “Roy’s are huge shoes to fill,” he said.  “He has a fantastic record and has created wonderful agent relationships over a very long period.  He’s a straight talking guy.  You always know where you are with him.  I know our partners and friends around the world will miss him very much.”

In fact TheMIGroup threw a party for Roy at the start of the FIDI convention in Cape Town.  The invited guests were those who had been particularly close to Roy during his career.   Everyone who was invited turned up demonstrating the respect the industry has for him and testimony to the high regard in which he is held.

But Roy is not ready for retirement yet.  Far from it.  He is now handling special projects for the company and is currently re-writing the company’s quality manual in preparation for upgrading its ISO 9001 accreditation from 2008 to 2015 which comes out later this year.  “I like to keep busy,” said Roy, knowing that the company has plenty more projects lined up for him in the future.  “An idle mind is the Devil’s workshop.”

Photo:  Left to right:  Rick Bennett, Roy Brace and Andy Neall.