It is shown that if X is a uniformly convex Banach space and S a bounded linear operator onX for which ?I-S?=1, then S is invertible if and only if ?I-12S? <1. From this it follows thatif S is invertible on X then either (i) dist(I,[S])<1, or (ii) 0 is the unique best approximation toI from [S], a natural (partial) converse to the well-known sufficient condition for invertibility thatdist(I,[S])<1.