The Key Learning Points:

1. The power of the collective and providing a safe space to underrepresented groups

2. One year on from George Floyd’s murder, what’s been achieved and what work do we still need to do

3. The need to move beyond optical allyship and implement practical steps that will improve the lives of employees

On this week's remote Risky Mix podcast, we're joined by Teniola Tijani, associate underwriter at Travelers and founder of Ladies That Lunch, a network that supports ladies in navigating work-life and dealing with the tensions that come with being underrepresented. Teni is here to chat to us today about her work creating Ladies That Lunch and, on the anniversary week of George Floyd’s murder, we’re going to reflect on what has changed and the importance of keeping the race discussion on the table.

Teni tells us how she entered the world of insurance, initially taking a summer placement with a Lloyd’s syndicate, and returning to the industry after completing her economics degree. Teni quickly realised: “There aren’t many people who look like me” and her “passion for people” lead her to launch Ladies that Lunch. “I remember the Lloyd’s environment feeling very lonely and me standing out like a sore thumb.” After an event, where Teni met other Black women in the industry, the first Ladies That Lunch event was put in the diary. “If I’m feeling all of these feelings then I’m sure another Black woman in another insurance organisation is feeling similarly, so how can we provide a place of refuge or comfort? Which is what Ladies That Lunch was intended to be.”

We ask Teni about some of the common themes or topics discussed within the collective and she explains that members often mention things like appearance, workplace promotion, acceptance, actually feeling included at work and the microaggressions they face: “These are things that people have lived through. Imagine working day in and day out, not being able to express yourself, and constantly going home with that weight” 

One year on and the conversation moves onto the George Floyd murder. We’re keen to hear Teni’s thoughts on how far she thinks we’ve come, and the work still needed. “It’s still very fresh for me - the murder of George Floyd changed my life!” Teni explains that this event lit a spark and motivated her to become bold and unapologetic in sharing her experiences. She adds that company responses to Black Lives Matter sat on a scale – from those simply putting out statements to those who took the time to listen, understand employee pain points and respond in a meaningful manner: “We had some companies who put out statements and thought that was enough. I saw how that felt for my members. I saw how disappointed people were.” 

Considering where we are today, Teni adds: “I think there is more of a consciousness, but when the verdict was read out, from a personal standpoint, it didn’t feel like a moment of elation because when I think about where the world still is, we still have a lot of work to do.” Teni believes one of the challenges we now face is fatigue: “My call to companies would be to not get tired because whether it’s a small part of your population, it’s an important part of your population, and there are still those tensions and feelings.” It’s because of this fatigue amongst Black people that the support of allies is needed more than ever: “We need our allies to stand up the most and stand in for us and make sure the agenda is still on the table even if we can’t be the face of it”. Teni explains that allies are needed to represent us, especially those in senior positions. Her hope is that companies continue to engage and are bold in the steps they make. She wants us to move beyond optical allyship and implement practical steps that will improve the lives of employees.

The Key Learning Points:

1. The life of a serial social entrepreneur and the power of purpose

2. The need to consider diversity, equity and inclusion as a strategic business priority, rather than a philanthropic action alone

3. Three pieces of advice for financial services business looking to do better when it comes to diversity, equity and inclusion 

On this week's remote Risky Mix podcast, we're thrilled to be joined, all the way from Wisconsin, by Deanna Singh - business consultant, keynote speaker, and podcaster who is internationally recognized for her work in leadership, diversity, equity, and inclusion. We’re excited today to hear about Deanna’s eclectic background and the fantastic work she’s doing to give power to marginalised communities.

Deanna is an African American and Sikh American mum based in Milwaukee and is the founder of four social enterprises. Deanna explains that her first company is called Uplifting Impact, which is focused on diversity, equity and inclusion work, providing coaching and training to almost 100,000 people to date across 30 countries. Her second company is Purposeful Hustle, with aims to help people find their purpose and bring that purpose to life. Deanna adds that her third business, Story to Tell Books, is a children’s book company which creates more positive images of children of colour, explaining: “Our children of colour make up more than 50% of our school-aged children, but are represented in less than 14% of books for kids. How do we change the narrative?” Deanna’s two sons, aged 8 and 12, are chairmen of Story to Tell Books and Deanna adds: “Unfortunately one of our biggest marginalised communities is our children. Where are their voices being heard? We make decisions about them and for them all day long. How often do we actually step back and give them the opportunity to use their own voices.”

Deanna’s fourth social enterprise is called Birth Coach Milwaukee. She is a certified Doula – a type of coach for people before, during and after birth – a move which was motivated by the high disparities in birth outcomes in her area: "If you are a woman of colour in our area you’re five times more likely to have a tragic experience during the birthing process.” Deanna learnt that by introducing a Doula or a midwife to the process, you can eliminate those disparities. 

The conversation moves onto Deanna’s experience working with financial services firms around diversity, equity and inclusion. “When you’re thinking about what you can do as a sector and where you can have the greatest impact, so much of it has to do with not what you’re offering but it’s in how you’re doing the business that you’re doing.” Much of her work involves helping clients to understand that diversity, equity and inclusion are not only altruistic things, they’re a business conversation: “This is a conversation about how you're thinking about the new markets you’re going to go into. This is a conversation about recruitment and retention. This is a conversation about growth opportunities. This is a conversation about your competitiveness and your ability to have innovation. This is a conversation about your marketing and branding.” Deanna explains that because diversity, equity and inclusion conversations are often seen as philanthropic, rather than strategic, it becomes harder to accept that there’s a real business case and even if the business case is accepted, business execs often don’t know how to implement the necessary change. 

Finally, Deanna shares her top three pieces of advice for financial services firms looking to get better around diversity, equity and inclusion:

1. Agree where you are now and where you want to go? 

2. Do an inventory - what will it require from us as an organisation to get to that place?

3. Do it! “Make a commitment and hold yourself accountable to the commitments that you’re making”

The Key Learning Points:

1. The role of digital as an enabler and making protection insurance more accessible to the underserved

2. The importance of choice and empowering consumers to self-serve when it comes to protection

3. How fear of change may be holding us back as an industry and acting as a barrier to innovation

On this week's remote Risky Mix podcast, we're joined by Chris Samuel, business operations director at iPipeline. Chris describes himself as a creative thinker, relationship builder, people motivator and passionate customer experience advocate and we’re excited today to be talking with him about protection and how we can make products more inclusive.

Chris admits that he found his calling when “falling into” an opportunity with the BGL group back in late 1999. A marketeer by trade, Chris always considers the end consumer and “this rather uninteresting thing we’re all selling called insurance.” He later stepped into operations roles with BGL and after helping to set up Beagle Street, the direct life insurance proposition, made the move to TCP LifeSystems which was subsequently acquired by iPipeline. Eight years later at iPipeline, Chris now looks after all UK and European clients from an implementation, sales and new business perspective.

The conversation moves onto the role of digital within the protection sale. Chris believes that digital enables accessibility: “It’s an enabler, it is no more”. When it comes to reaching the underserved, mass, or “low-value” markets, digital is key in delivering direct-to-consumer (D2C) propositions, but Chris questions why the industry believes that “D2C needs simplified products”, relying on the assumption that consumers won’t understand the full comprehensive insurance offerings: “Direct to consumer is seen as an inferior access to the cover people need and it gets denigrated.”

Chris explains that he’d like to see a shift away from the ‘all-or-nothing’ mentality when it comes to protection. The desire to serve only the best “gold-plated cover”, ensuring full protection of all needs – which clearly delivers the best outcome for many - but leaves a huge proportion of the population excluded from the conversation because they simply can't afford that gold-plated protection. For Chris, “some cover is better than no cover”. He wonders how, as an industry, we can make it more appealing for advisers to speak to this end of the market: “Why is it that we can’t make selling a £10 a month policy profitable for an advised piece of business?” But as things stand today, Chris believes that there should be some acknowledgement that “we can co-exist together” – D2C and advised distribution should work together and address the different needs within the market.

For Chris, it’s not about simplification of propositions to reflect separate sales channel, it’s about choice and delivering the ability for consumers to self-serve where it’s desired. It’s about empowering the consumer, giving them flexibility and options. It’s about offering a protection policy that flexes as a consumer moves through different life stages - reflecting the modern way of living.

So, what’s held us back as an industry in delivering this? In Chris’s opinion, it’s fear of change: “Can we afford to be different and get this wrong?” Of course, these are long-term insurance contracts and to do things differently presents risks in terms of mix of business and assumptions made, which Chris believes has encouraged formation of a more conservative approach, and as a result, sadly many innovations have died when arguably they shouldn’t have.

A special thanks to iPipeline for their ongoing support of the Risky Mix and partnering with us to help make the financial services industry more inclusive.

The Key Learning Points:

1. Creating an inclusive work environment and the necessity for leadership accountability

2. The race fluency barrier and why we need to give each other space to make mistakes

3. The importance of not preaching to the converted and instead, taking someone with you on the journey, who otherwise wouldn’t get involved

On this week's remote Risky Mix podcast, we're thrilled to be joined by a real powerhouse in the industry. Rob Anarfi is the global head of compliance at Beazley, and he’s a vocal, active champion of providing a voice to underrepresented groups. He’s the senior sponsor of RACE at Beazley and is an international role model for iCAN, the insurance cultural awareness network.

It was during Rob’s time working with the regulator that he became more aware of the inequity that exists in the industry and today he finds himself in the position of an “activist”: “One of my beliefs is, if you’ve been in a position of a minority, you should really be able to empathise with another minority.” 

We ask Rob what enabled his journey and helped him to become an educator and activist around race, in particular. He provides three answers:

1.      Inspiration 

 “You can’t be what you can’t see” – Rob was inspired by public figures, like Barack Obama, and also those around him who were brave enough to put their “head above the parapet”. He adds that you need role models to inspire you. 

2.      Motivation  

“I came to understand my privilege at a certain point in time” – Rob explains how his life trajectory was completely different because he was born in the UK, and recognises the privilege that came with that, especially when compared to so many others from his home country of Ghana. His motivation came from understanding that privilege. 

3.      Confidence 

“The confidence came the more senior I got” – Rob explains that he was never too afraid to speak his mind, but admits that he never spoke his mind when it came to inequity or race. In fact, early on in his career, he chose to block it. As Rob became more senior, he felt that people recognised what he brought as an individual, and were less concerned if he spoke about his culture.

The conversation moves onto the importance of holding leaders accountable around inclusion: “Cultural change has to come from the top - inclusivity is a cultural change.” Rob adds that many organisations often look to their marginalised communities to “fix things”, but asks: “If they didn’t create it, how can they fix it?” Rob believes that leaders need to take responsibility and ask employee resource groups and those communities for advice. Racial equity has to be a priority for the most senior people in the organisation.

We ask Rob whether he feels that leadership teams are equipped to do this. “It’s a very sensitive, complex and emotive subject” - the language, and what’s acceptable is always moving on. Even people who want to have the dialogue have to get over the “race fluency barrier”. He provides the following pieces of advice: “I would really encourage people who are nervous, if they have the right intent, to just speak.” And for people in the community: “Let’s try and move past the amount of emotion we attach to the words if they are coming from people who are trying to help” Let’s give each other the space to make mistakes. 

Finally, we speak about the importance of bringing people with you on that educational journey, in the interest of not "preaching to the converted". So if you've made it this far, and enjoyed this episode with Rob, please share it with someone, perhaps a leader within your organisation, who you think would benefit from hearing these messages.

The Key Learning Points:

1. Experiences of sexual assault and the challenges around speaking up, driven by the inner conflict many women face

2. The importance of recognising the wider context, and how this drives gender norms and poor behaviours

3. The approach organisations can take to shift away from treating the symptoms to actually addressing the causes

On this week's remote Risky Mix podcast, we're lucky to be joined by a former guest, Emily Shaw, founder and CEO of Pineapple People, and Clare Knight, an independent consultant in the London insurance market. The ladies are here today to talk to us about speaking up, and why it’s important for us all to remember the context around poor behaviours and the need to treat the cause, not the symptoms.

Clare started her career as a lawyer in London, focusing on insurance litigation as a professional indemnity defence litigator working in the Lloyd’s of London market. After 6 years she moved to work in-house at one of the big syndicates and eventually left to become an independent consultant, which she’s been doing for the past two years.

Clare has had to deal with a number of incidents of sexual assault and harassment during her career and offers to share three particularly hard-hitting stories. She recalls the challenges around speaking up, and after the first incident was disappointed by the reaction from the female law partner: “She rolled her eyes at me and said ‘oh, well it’s your fault for flirting.’” Feeling like she had nowhere to go, Clare found herself in a similar situation after the second incident and admits: “So what did I do? Absolutely nothing. Didn’t speak up, didn’t do anything about it.” She explains the role of programming in all of these situations but shares how she berated herself for not speaking up and calling out the poor behaviours she’d fallen victim to. 

The punishment and shame around not speaking up come from an inner conflict many women face, Emily explains: “The conditioning we’ve had our entire lives about our gender and how we should behave is at odds with our beliefs and our values and our need to protect ourselves.” She adds that this is why there’s a struggle - it’s not about being brave, having courage or feeling strong, so women shouldn’t punish themselves for not calling these things out. “The idea of speaking up in itself represents something quite problematic - what we’re doing is saying ‘this problem exists. Let’s not worry about the perpetrator, let’s make sure that the victims are doing everything they can to stop themselves from being victims.’" Emily believes that we need to look at the wider context and step away from the bad behaviour for a moment.

We are taught so many messages about gender, even from a young age, which inform our beliefs and create stereotypes. Emily shares some shocking statistics around how the media plays a role in perpetuating the belief that women should not take up space, simply demonstrated by how little speaking time females get in films, even when the leading role is played by a female character. Emily adds that we’re giving these messages to children about how women take up space, then we’re surprised that women aren’t represented in boardrooms?!

Emily believes that speaking up is not about teaching women to navigate this space while removing men from the narrative. The work is about recognising, unlearning and dismantling this culture. We need to start really looking for this stuff. Emily adds that when you notice it more, you understand it and you’re less susceptible to it. “Instead of holding active bystander sessions, or unconscious bias training, perhaps we should be having conversations about the wider context?” - Dealing with the cause, not the symptoms.

Catch our previous episode with Emily here.

The Key Learning Points:

1. The difference between implicit and explicit bias, and why language should change around unconscious bias

2. The history of unconscious bias training (UBT) and recognising it’s just one small piece of the D&I puzzle

3. Three key limitations of our brains and how biases compensate for these

On this week's remote Risky Mix podcast, we're joined by Priscila Law, founder of the Inclusive Leadership Company, a business that helps organizations boost performance by building diverse, equitable and inclusive workplaces. Priscila is a true D&I expert, holds a PhD in social sciences and is a certified brain-based coach and today we’re excited to be exploring the topic of unconscious bias and the effectiveness of training. 

Priscila shares her career story. She started working in the pharmaceutical industry in Brazil, alongside studying for her degree and MBA. She then moved to the UK at the age of 23 and started working in HR, continuing her studies and completing her PhD. Priscila worked in HR for 10 years, moving up the career ladder to become more specialised in leadership development and D&I. In July 2020, she set up her own practice - the Inclusive Leadership Company.  

We talk about the differences between implicit and explicit bias during the episode and Priscila explains that unconscious bias and implicit bias are really the same thing but suggests a change of language away from ‘unconscious’ because we’re not actually unconscious, we’re responding to a stimulus. 

Priscila explains that three events lead to the creation of unconscious bias training – the implicit association tests launched by Harvard in 1998, the 2010 Equality Act and a report on race in the workplace by McGregor-Smith, combined with a recommendation for the government to deliver UBT to every adult in the UK workplace. But the problem was that “people took the report out of context…'if I do the training, I have all my equality issues sorted!'” The issue of implicit biases is so complex, and while it’s great to build awareness, ”knowing is not doing.” 

Priscila adds: “You can’t expect UBT to make people change their behaviours, because they won’t” adding that even if behaviours do change, it will likely be a short-term shift because we act on autopilot. And raising awareness of bias presents issues also – people can feel guilt when the results of a test highlight biases which don’t agree with an individual’s value set and beliefs, because they may be perceived as explicit biases, when they’re, in fact, implicit. This incongruence can lead to inaction. Priscila feels that awareness is one thing, but organisations must give teams the tools to outsmart their implicit biases. 

Priscila adds that we all have biases and they’re there to compensate for some of our brain’s limitations:

1.      Bounded rationality theory – our brain is limited in terms of how much information it can process, so it goes to short cuts which are full of bias

2.      It takes energy to act on a highly conscious level – our brains favour autopilot to save energy and therefore introduces biases

3.      The brain is wired to keep us safe – different is a threat to us, so we naturally exclude what we don’t know

UBT is just one single piece of the puzzle. Priscila advises - be careful with the content - help people understand implicit bias and the neuroscience element so that they feel empowered to change. Give them tools to change, instead of just providing awareness. UBT is not the only solution, it’s part of a bigger picture.  

The Key Learning Points:

1. The power of vulnerability and creating that human connection based around compassion

2. The role of workplaces in creating physiologically safe environments that allow people to be authentic

3. Ways to connect to our intuition and its influence in driving career pivots and change

This week we welcome back Eilish Jamieson to the remote Risky Mix podcast. Two weeks ago, Eilish spoke to us about her impressive career and the difficult experiences she faced around burnout. Listen to episode 48 to hear more about this and her journey to setting up her own coaching business. This week we explore two important areas, and topics that Eilish often sees coming up with her coaching clients – vulnerability and career pivoting. Let’s get into it…

In episode 48, Eilish shared her story of burnout and today acknowledges that it probably took a year to “own it”. The thing she was most fearful of was being seen to be vulnerable. It was a big learning curve, acknowledging that the damage she’d done was as a result of punishing herself for something that wasn’t there in the first place: “All the things I thought I was hiding from the world, in many ways, were the things that I think connected people with me.” It’s vulnerability that people connect with. 

Eilish refers to the binary view of failure, something that she bought into fully: “You’re one or the other. You’re either successful or you’re a failure.” We’ve been brought up to believe that “you’ve got to be successful because if you’re not, you’re a failure!” Eilish adds that when she owned the burnout, she started to show herself compassion: “When I was energised and happy, all the people around me were energised and happy. The energy I created within myself extended to the people I loved.” The conversation moves onto what companies can do to create spaces that allow people to be vulnerable: “The most important thing is that organisations create physiologically safe environments for people to be human.” 

We talk about career pivoting, which, for Eilish, is about packaging the best of what you already have, recognising your needs and designing something that gets you from A to B, appreciating that that journey isn’t linear. Eilish refers to TheoryU by Otto Scharmer which says you must go deep before you start to plan out. First of all, explore into you - what got you to where you are today, what isn’t working and why it isn't working? Eilish believes that you need to intuitively connect to yourself. 

For individuals considering making a career change, Eilish recommends starting to reach out, building a support structure and connecting with people who do what you want to do. It’s through that expansion you can start to access your own instincts.

The Key Learning Points:

1. The difficult balance between work and motherhood, accentuated by workplace cultures and societal pressures 

2. The impact of chronic stress on the body, leading to eventual burnout

3. The role of coaching in developing self-compassion and getting clarity on the things we really care about

Today on the remote Risky Mix podcast, we’re thrilled to be joined by the inspiration that is Eilish Jamieson. Eilish has a hugely impressive background, with a successful career in financial services with names such as KPMG and Goldman Sachs. She pivoted from the fast-paced corporate world to establish her own coaching business in 2018 and now works with high performing women from all kinds of industries, but who share a common desire to transform the path they are on, and for the women coming behind them.

Eilish started her career with KPMG, training to become a chartered account: “I was one of these people that did accounting at A level. And then did accounting as a degree. And then joined an accounting firm!” After a three-year stint in Australia with KPMG, Eilish decided that it was time to try something different. A Headhunter approached her about joining Goldman Sachs and shortly after she found herself developing the audit strategy for the bank: “I pretty much worked my way around every team within Goldman Sachs in audit over the 12 years I was there.”

Eilish had an impressive, and varied, career with Goldman, but adds that “every good story has another side to it.” Eilish had applied herself 100% to her job, but when she had her first child at 32, Eilish explains that things needed to change: “That was really the start of me having to confront aspects of my role and how suited it was to my life and my needs.” Eilish went on to have two more children over the next five years and tells us the story of how tricky it was to balance work and being a mum. She was conflicted and wanted to spend more time with her family but felt this pressure to work at the same pace, almost as if she was being forced to do so: “That pressure that you can put on yourself, alongside an organisational culture and a societal pressure. All of that, when you bring it together, really can leave you feeling like you don’t have choice.”

The tipping point for Eilish came one night in January, when at age 39, she woke up to the scary realization that she couldn’t move her arm or legs. In A&E the doctor asked: “Are you stressed by any chance? I think it’s likely that you’re very stressed.” This came as a huge surprise to Eilish, because she’d been operating for years at this plateau level of stress and elevated cortisol - it had become her norm: “In that stage of my career I was living from my neck upwards.” This surprising insight was the push Eilish needed to resign from her job at Goldman.

“When I left Goldman, the biggest challenge I faced was an identity challenge.” Eilish had had 20 years with two organisations and after leaving was left understandably thinking “What am I? Who am I?” She spent her first year desperate to create something and explains that her brain was like “popcorn” – coming up with weird and wonderful business ideas: “I was all over the place”. For Eilish, this time felt quite panicked and chaotic.

Eilish went on to work with a fantastic coach who helped her to better understand how she’d been working and, at the same time, she recognized a passion for the line of work so she completed a coaching psychology postgraduate and launched her own business.

Eilish will be joining us back on the Risky Mix podcast to discuss vulnerability and career pivoting, so join us in a couple of weeks for more fascinating insights!

The Key Learning Points:

1. Workplace cultural challenges faced by women, ways to reclaim your power and the importance of doing so

2. Digital marketing approaches around life insurance and how they need to change as you move down the marketing funnel

3. The role of women in households today, the importance of recognising unpaid care and the use of targeted marketing messages to close the female protection gap

On this week's remote Risky Mix podcast, we're joined by Vickie Smith, now Chief Marketing Officer at Falling Rain, a global data privacy company, and a lady with lots of experience marketing life insurance in the US. Vickie calls herself an ‘international digital nomad’ and is speaking to us today from Barcelona. We’re looking forward to hearing more about her travels in this episode and diving into the world of marketing insurance.

Vickie started her career as a receptionist at an internet security company in Georgia and quickly moved into the marketing team. After a few years, Vickie moved to New York and secured a marketing job for a cable TV provider. In 2007, she moved back to Massachusetts, where she was born and raised, and joined a marketing agency which served non-profits. Eight years later she entered the world of insurance and joined a large corporation looking to launch a new direct-to-consumer offering. At the same time, she returned to school to get her MBA and recalls the learnings she gathered around D&I: “Schools, nowadays, are really aware of the struggles that diversity and gender and all these things - how they impact people in the workplace. They are teaching skills to develop a healthier work environment.” Vickie admits that her work environment was “tough culturally” and focused on applying techniques that she’d learnt in school to “take back her power.”

Vickie spent five years working in life insurance in the US and explains some of her marketing frustrations: “The biggest difference I noticed right away with marketing in insurance is that it was a little tougher to be really creative.” She adds that this was mainly due to the brands she worked with and a desire for these established brands to remain consistent, and while these approaches originally worked, Vickie questions whether a different approach may be needed to reach today’s consumers. 

We talk about the marketing funnel and the approaches Vickie has seen work, at each stage, when it comes to life insurance. She explains that to get people engaged in your brand, the creative is really important, especially on channels like social media. But as you move down the funnel to the point where a consumer is about to purchase, thinking becomes more practical, more product-focused, more price-led, and this is where things can get complicated: “You have to pay attention to which channel you are in the marketing funnel. Is it awareness, where you have to be more creative? Or are you now going to lower in the funnel where they’re aware and about to make a decision?” 

The conversion moves onto women and the need to get more women financially protected. Vickie explains that the makeup of households is very different today: “Never have we had a time when there are so many different types of roles in the household. We have stay at home mums, we have two mums, we have two working parents, we have households with multi-generational homes.” She adds that all of these groups need unique marketing messages. She has some experience of running a marketing campaign around life insurance for a targeted group of women but adds: “I don’t think we were risky enough in how we said it. What happened was that the messaging became bland and safe.” She wishes they’d gone a bit further and had more fun with it. 

The Key Learning Points:

1. Three things the insurance industry can do to help those outside of the industry with health conditions, who don’t know anything about insurance

2. The support that advisers need when speaking with customers who could be in vulnerable situations

3. How companies can create a culture that removes barriers for employees with health conditions

On this week's remote Risky Mix podcast, we're joined by Kathryn Knowles, managing director of Cura, protection advice business focused on ‘insuring the uninsurable’. She’s also a podcasting pro, hosting The Practical Protection Podcast and has won a number of industry awards including Female Diversity Champion of the Year and Social Media Influencer of the Year!

Kathryn entered the protection industry back in 2010 and around a similar time, she started looking for her own personal protection insurance. Because she has hypermobility syndrome and suffers with generalised anxiety disorder, only two insurers even considered her application: “I’ve got a mortgage, I’ve got a husband, I’m working full time. And yet I can’t have insurance.” Eventually, she accepted insurance at a higher premium, which she was told that was because of her mental health, an explanation she found difficult: “You’re being told that you’re still not normal!” Kathryn saw a need to help those outside of the industry with health conditions, who have limited knowledge of insurance. This became a focus when launching Cura in 2012.  

The conversation moves onto the support that advisers need when speaking with customers who could be in vulnerable situations and who need to have challenging conversations around physical and mental health. Kathryn explains that advisers at Cura have six months of training – three months training on the industry and three months on how to approach difficult conversations and also complete industry exams. “Tone and empathy is a massive thing with our advisers.” Cura has a “red flag system” in their office, so if someone needs support they wave their flag: “It’s the responsibility of the owners of advisory firms to make sure that the team is completely safe and they have these systems in place to feel safe.”

We ask Kathryn what three asks she has of insurers and the industry:

1.  More detailed decline letters - “I think there is a duty upon insurers to contact people and speak through it.”

2.  Broadening critical illness definitions – introducing more catch-all, broader, definitions

3.  More life cover for people who’ve had mental health conditions – using more self-harm and suicide exclusions: “A lot more people would be happy with exclusions than insurers think”

We then chat more about the Cura team that Kathryn and Alan have built. The team of 20 is very diverse in terms of gender, with 80% females and 20% males. She explains: “It’s who comes to apply to work for us. So far, it’s been a lot of women who want to work for us, and we’re getting quite a few female advisers now.” Kathryn explains that Cura still has some work to do to achieve a better racial mix: “I’ll be very honest and say that the company is white. That’s not something I like. I would absolutely love to have more diversity in the company." Kathryn hopes that remote working will help to achieve a greater mix around race and ethnicity.

Kathryn adds that many individuals within the Cura team have health conditions and explains: “We’re diverse when it comes to gender and we are very inclusive when it comes to health.” She has focused on removing barriers for Cura employees - for working parents, they offer adapted hours to fit around schooling. Cura also offers flexible hours to fit around sporting seasons and events for team members taking part in local sporting activities.