Other people on your team, might not be on the same SQL level as you. E.g. you can create very fast update/bulk/etc. operations directly in your used SQL engine, but then provide some ORM for people not familiar so that they can get access (speed might not be critical to them, just access to the db).
An example - in the game industry we often have technical artists - pretty cool bunch of folks with awesome talents - art (maya, motionbuilder, etc.) and coding (python, mel, C/C++) - these folks are never afraid to step into the dark woods, and would take SQL and learn it as if it was nothing dangerous, but they surely won't mind a good ORM. From what I've learned, they see most of these things as tools.
An example - in the game industry we often have technical artists - pretty cool bunch of folks with awesome talents - art (maya, motionbuilder, etc.) and coding (python, mel, C/C++) - these folks are never afraid to step into the dark woods, and would take SQL and learn it as if it was nothing dangerous, but they surely won't mind a good ORM. From what I've learned, they see most of these things as tools.