The Key Learning Points:

1. Tips for organisations looking to build diverse and inclusive work cultures

2. The importance of encouraging difficult conversations about race in the workplace and embracing the discomfort involved

3.The need for companies to provide better support to, and attract, colleagues with disabilities in order to create a more representative industry

This week, we're joined by a lady who’s been a pioneer in many ways for diversity and inclusion within the insurance industry. Tali Shlomo is an internationally recognized HR director, and diversity, inclusion and wellbeing specialist.  As well as being shortlisted in the 2020 Women in Finance awards for Ambassador of the Year, she was highly commended in the Financial Adviser Diversity in Finance Awards 2020 for Diversity Champion of the Year. She’s also been recognised in the 2020 Insurance Business Global 100 influential people for creating inclusive cultures.

We start by asking Tali about her career journey. She left university and started a summer job in London in, what she described, as the rag trade, working in haberdashery. She then moved to a telecoms start-up - joining as number 11 and working her way up to become head of European operations, and leaving as number 1,000! Tali joined the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) in 2001 and stayed there for almost two decades, holding HR manager, HR director and global people engagement director roles. She has benefited from working in a wide variety of industries: “In each one of them I’ve learnt something, and fundamentally the common thread is all about people. How do we support people, how do we support the business to get the best out of people?”

During her time with the CII, Tali not only supported her colleagues within the institute but also member firms, which she enjoyed as she could see her work being applied practically. She helped to create the dialogue around diversity, inclusion and wellbeing – starting the conversation around things like dyslexia and Aspergers, all while using the Equality Act as her “anchor”.

Two of her main focuses, during her time at the CII, were ethnicity and disability. As the government started to look towards the ethnicity pay gap and broadening out the legal requirement to disclose the gender pay gap, Tali worked on a thought leadership paper, providing insight on the steps that need to be taken by organisations in preparation. “Ethnicity is so much more complex than gender. Ethnicity has many layers.” Tali believes that we need to feel uncomfortable: “Talking about race – we’re uncomfortable. Sometimes the only way we grow is through being uncomfortable. Creating a place where we can feel uncomfortable in the workplace so that we can grow and better ourselves, is fundamental.”

Tali believes that we’re still not tackling disabilities, especially invisible disabilities: “The next opportunity for us is looking at how we support our colleagues and attracting colleagues with disabilities. Because if we are really here to deliver better consumer outcomes, then surely, we need to represent our consumers.”

The conversation moves onto technology. Tali believes that AI amplifies biases because it’s developed through groupthink: “Yes it’s tested, but how mindful are we to test it around ages, different skin colours, different accents?” She acknowledges that none of this is intentional, however, says that we do need to be mindful and break down the groupthink.

Tali providers tips for organisations looking to build diverse and inclusive work cultures. For her, it’s all about continuing the conversation. And for leaders, start to invest more budget into the area, look at policies that can shift and celebrate some of the wonderful things that have taken place already around D&I.

The Key Learning Points:

1. That focusing more on your competence and less on the things that make you a minority can really help with self-belief and confidence when navigating non-inclusive environments

2. The importance of finding passion in your professional life to pull you through the inevitable ups and downs

3. How technology could have the power to transform life insurance sales - but it’s all about balance

Joining us on this week's remote Risky Mix podcast, is Neha Agarwal, head of actuarial at iPipeline - a business on a mission to grow the UK protection insurance market through innovative technology. Neha is here to share her career story, her experience as a young Indian woman in the sector and her thoughts on how technology has the power to transform life insurance sales.

Neha joined iPipeline six years ago as an analyst. She’s progressed in her career and is now head of actuarial, managing an actuarial services team and helping to drive actuarial innovation within insurance companies in the UK and US. iPipeline helped Neha to realise her passion for technology and actuarial work. She tells us a bit more about iPipeline, a business which she believes is “at the forefront of digital transformation”, processing 30% of the UK’s protection business, through the ‘SSG Digital Platform’, alone, which, to date, equates to 3.5m policies.

Neha’s belief is that “technology is reinventing the life insurance industry” and from her perspective, the current COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in two outcomes for insurers when it comes to digital transformation. There are those companies who have already invested in digital which have been able to react very quickly in terms of reprices and changes to the underwriting rules. Then there are other companies, for which the pandemic has been a “wakeup call”, and there is now much urgency to innovate. When it comes to the role of technology in the protection insurance space, for Neha “it comes back to the right balance.” Neha believes that everybody has different needs, so an automated process which delivers the same journey for every individual won’t work. We can add human interaction where it’s required “but we have to automate the processes which cause unnecessary delays.”

Being a young Indian woman in both the actuarial and tech space, we were keen to hear about Neha’s experience. She explains that she has never faced any challenges around her race, because her role involves working with colleagues from across the globe, including China, India, Sri Lanka and Romania. She admits, though, that she did face some difficulty as a woman:  “I was doing very well from the very start of my career, but that also meant that I had to be in meetings that had a predominantly male audience.” She explains that meetings which took place early on in her career were difficult: “I remember walking out of meetings without even saying a single word!” But Neha decided to run a “series of experiments”, where she would try being a little more assertive and confident: “I started considering myself as not a female among the males, but I started thinking of myself as a confident individual who knew what she was saying."

Neha quotes iPipeline’s gender mix statistics, a business with women in over a third of senior management roles, with different splits across the two offices:  “We are on a journey and I see iPipeline, as a business, achieving gender diversity.”

We end the episode by asking Neha for the key message she’d like Risky Mix listeners to take away: “Life will give you ups and downs. But something that can keep you going is your passion. So always search for your passion and your life journey becomes really easy.” For Neha, that passion is “helping insurers move up the ladder of technological innovation.”

The Key Learning Points:

1. Tips on how to explain CV gaps to potential employers to avoid harming career prospects

2. The importance of learning to communicate the value - in addition to ‘soft skills’ - that you can bring to a company, which often aren’t included in a CV

3. Where empathy and the human side of individuals comes into play within the insurance sector

On this week's remote Risky Mix podcast, we're joined by someone who I think is one very cool lady! Hayley Maynard works in strategy at Chaucer, the specialty reinsurance group, and holds a PhD in geospatial econometrics. Oh, and she also spent six years living in a van chasing her passion for wine, climbing, surfing, and ultra-marathoning!

Hayley grew up in Laguna Beach, California, where she did her undergrad and made the decision to start living in her car after she “found climbing”, got into long-distance running and surfing. She was able to live an amazing nomad lifestyle - working at vineyards during wine season and enjoying the best climbing and surfing that Nevada, New Zealand and Australia had to offer. Hayley and her partner decided to move to Australia and they agreed to settle down. It was in Australia that Hayley “fell into” her PhD, becoming curious about the use of technology to manage vineyards better and make better wine. Hayley then moved to Sydney, where she finished her Postdoc, and started looking for a job.

Hayley explains that it took her a while to find a full-time job because many employers didn’t like the fact that she had a PhD, assuming that she’d be bad with people! Hayley refused to take this experience off her CV and she tells us about the frustration she feels around CV gaps: “I hate it when people tell me I need to explain a gap on my CV. Or if I take a year out, I’m taking a career break. No, I’m absolutely not. I’m investing in myself.” Over time, Hayley became better able to explain the value she was bringing and how her unique life experiences made her into an individual that businesses should hire. Like many of the Risky Mix guests, Hayley admits that she “fell into insurance” and she joined Allianz in the small business insurance space but says - “I really did fall in love with insurance.”

Hayley has spent four years in the insurance sector. Starting in product management at Allianz and then moving into strategy at Allianz Australia. She then transitioned over to the London office and took a role as chief of staff for a board member and is now currently working at Chaucer, reporting into the chief strategy officer. Hayley adds that her job really involves three key parts – innovation, parametrics and competitor analysis.

For individuals thinking about taking a career break, whether that’s to go travelling, or perhaps to start a family, Hayley shares her top tips on how to do that without allowing the negative career impact that so many of us worry about. Hayley starts by saying: “How do you value a soft skill? How do you value a life experience?” These softer skills rarely appear on CVs, so how can we communicate their value? “95% of my job is story-telling, but where does story-telling sit on your CV? Where does empathy sit on your CV?”

Hayley shares how she communicates her value: “The first step is the hardest, and that’s noticing what the quality is, what the skill is or what you’ve learned.” Next, it’s about quantifying that value, across three time horizons: “There’s every day, there’s sometimes – which is once a month, once a quarter, and then there’s every now and then, and that’s once a year, once every five years, once in your career.” Finally, it’s about selling your value: “It’s incumbent upon you to make it as easy as possible for whoever you’re explaining your story to, to understand the value.”

The Key Learning Points:

 1. The importance of diverse recruitment in the workplace

 2. The most effective to implement inclusive hiring methods

3. The extent to which the Black Lives Matter movement has put the United States ahead in conversations about race and diversity in the workplace

Today on the remote Risky Mix Podcast we’re joined by the wonderful Christina Brooks, co-founder of Ruebik, a boutique executive search firm specialising in sourcing and placing diverse candidates. Christina has a stellar career history in HR with experience in research, delivery, leadership and learning, and global executive talent acquisition at firms such as the BBC, Frazer Jones, Kinsey Allen and Rolls-Royce. She’s now taken this impressive experience to Ruebik. She’s also a trustee of the Footsteps Trust, a charitable organisation offering students with emotional behavioural difficulties alternative pathways for education, career progression and the ability to reach their maximum potential.

Born in Gloucestershire, Christina moved to Tottenham in London at the age of 14 when her mother identified that London offered far more opportunities for black individuals than their hometown did. “It was a real eye-opener to me because I was just introduced to this explosion of colour and different people and different ethnicities. I really got to see and live with other cultures, which was very fundamental in shaping my business and what I stand for today.” Christina decided not to go to university and instead started work at the BBC, where she “cut her teeth” in the corporate world, working in the HR department. 

From the BBC, Christina moved into the financial services executive search industry and says that “it was actually really hard” to transition from a creative industry into financial services: “I didn’t notice the colour of my skin or the gender that I happened to be in that environment. It was somewhere that I felt I belonged.” The new world of finance was not as diverse or inclusive and Christina says “I felt like I’d left colour behind”. She shares a particularly shocking story of a time when she met a finance candidate face-to-face:  “What I didn’t realise at the time was that my colour wasn’t an issue because they assumed that they were speaking with a white individual, they didn’t actually realise I was black on the other end of the phone.” 

Christina left exec search behind and moved into more corporate function roles. “Yes diversity did increase, but the conversation was still not there around racial diversity. What we were talking about was gender diversity and making that more of a level playing field.” She also spent some time with a diversity recruitment agency: “What I was fortunate enough to do was to champion underrepresented communities all day every day. And that’s really where my passion came from in terms of specialising in the underserved.” 

The conversion naturally moves onto diverse recruitment and Christina explains that she doesn’t believe in positive discrimination because she feels that it dilutes professionalism and skillsets. For her, inclusive methods of hiring are key, and they have to come from the top. 

Christina does some work internationally and she adds that the US is much further ahead in terms of the conversation around inclusion because it’s been so polarised there for such a long time as we’ve seen with the Black Life Matter movement, so conversations have happened sooner than they have here in the UK. “There’s an electricity of opportunity right now! Firstly, the conversation around race. And secondly, COVID-19, which has completely revolutionized the way in which we work.”

The Key Learning Points:

1. Practical advice for women to develop confidence and knowledge in order to advance their careers within insurance

2. The struggles people face through unforeseen career setbacks and how they can be turned into a positive

3. The importance of working to break barriers within the insurance sector to close the gender gap

On this episode of the Risky Mix podcast, we're joined by Katherine Bryant, founder of the fantastic Insurance Breakfast Club, a leadership development programme that supports women in developing the confidence, knowledge, network, and skills to advance their careers. Katherine is also a qualified cognitive behavioural coach and Managing Director of The Progress Partnership, which delivers coaching, mentoring & training programs to companies within the risk and reinsurance sector.

Katherine has spent her whole career in insurance, specifically in the Lloyd’s of London market, and was exposed to the sector from a young age because her father was a loss adjustor. When Katherine reached the age of 16, her dad presented two work experience opportunities: One with an accountancy firm and one with an insurance broking house. Despite her dad’s guidance, Katherine opted for the broking route and vividly recalls her first day back in 1993, being escorted to the international property floor. She explains that she saw a sea of people in suits, shouting at each other, and the room was just full of passion and energy. And that was it, Katherine thought: “This is where I want to be!” She went back there for a few summers of work experience and when she left school, decided not to go to university, instead taking a full-time role in the Lloyd’s market.

Katherine has had a varied career in insurance. She held an underwriting role at AXA, an innovation role at an insurtech, she’s worked for Marsh and JLT and was COO at Aon. It was during her time at JLT that Kathrine ended up with repetitive strain injury (RSI) in both hands which sadly meant that she was signed off sick. Katherine explained that this was a challenging time for her and felt herself going into a “downward spiral”. It was when her hand therapist referred her to a coach, that Katherine was able to process her struggles, build self-esteem and re-enter the world of work. Katherine had actually qualified as a coach during her time at JLT, and when offered an elevated position at Aon, decided to focus more on the coaching side and what she loved and excited her. Katherine explains: “Within two weeks I had a book of coaching clients.” 90% of her clients were women, most were mid-senior level, all were ambitious and great at what they did, but all of them were facing similar challenges and obstacles. She hadn’t noticed the barriers and inequalities that existed in the industry until she took a step back. “The culture really encourages a certain type of behaviour and if you don’t fit that mould you really struggle.”

The conversation then moves nicely onto The Insurance Breakfast Club which Katherine founded and describes as “the biggest joy in my life.” Katherine explains that the work she does through The Progress Partnership is with organisations to help shift the culture but adds: “I’m also a pragmatist. I know that if we just wait for these cultures to shift, we could all be waiting a very long time.” Having spoken to many women facing the same challenges, Katherine asked: “How can I help more people than I can one-to-one?” And so, The Breakfast Club was born. For Katherine, it’s about giving really practical advice and delivering tangible outcomes to help more women move up organisations and close that gender gap. One year in, Katherine says: “I can’t wait to see what they achieve next.”

For ladies interested in getting involved you can visit https://insurancebreakfastclub.com/

The Key Learning Points:

1.The challenges of being a young and confident woman in a male-dominated industry.

2.Top tips for developing a resilient mindset.

3. How fitness, one day, could have a place in the corporate world.

On this week's remote Risky Mix podcast, we're joined by a rising star of the insurance industry. Sophie Vickery was named Employee of the Year at Allianz early in her career and was one of Insurance Business Magazine's Young Guns in 2018. Having moved to Simply Business in mid-2019, she recently won the SB-er of the Year award and alongside her insurance career, juggles a wide variety of other activities - including being a fitness and dance instructor.

Sophie explains that she has two main passions – people and health and fitness. It’s these passions that led her to start a number of side hustles alongside her career in insurance, which we speak more about later in the episode. Sophie has spent five years in the insurance industry so far and found her first role after looking for a sector that combined her love of English and Maths. She lives in Guildford which placed her perfectly for a role at Allianz but admits: “I knew absolutely nothing about insurance. I’d bought maybe two policies for contents insurance, that was it!” Sophie’s role involved looking after brokers and she held various roles in personal and commercial lines. Having started at the insurer when she was just 22, Sophie explains: “I look back now and I’m like, ‘I don’t really know how I did some of those things!” Sophie worked at Allianz for three to four years when she received a knock on the door from a recruiter who presented the Simply Business role. She was attracted to the prospect of working for a new, tech-focused company, which would enable her to develop new skills and experience. Sophie has now been at Simply Business for just over a year. 

We speak to Sophie about her experience in the broker space as a young woman. “Being a young woman in the industry certainly had its challenges.” Sophie explains that there were so many times when she was the only woman walking into broker meetings: “You walk in and you feel it.” Sophie’s approach was to make sure that she was adding value - bringing expertise that they didn’t already have in the room: “I need to know more. I need to be ahead!” She would put in extra work before meetings to get rid of that “back-foot feeling” and aimed to come across as strong and assertive, even though she admits that at times she didn’t feel very comfortable, but it was her way of setting the tone. “There were times when I’d leave meetings and be in the car on the motorway and be in tears because I found it exhausting to put on this big confident aura.” Sophie also noticed that her age held her back, possibly more than her gender in the early stages of her career. Sophie speaks a lot about getting yourself into the right headspace and building resilience: “It does take practice. It does take a lot of grit and confidence.” For her, audiobooks and podcasts really help, and she shares her top recommendations:  Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, Girl, Stop Apologising by Rachel Hollis, Annie Mac’s podcast, Changes, and Positively Selfish by Robyn Lee.

We move on to chat about Sophie’s numerous side hustles. She’s been a fitness instructor for around six years, starting out in the world of Zumba, explaining that she “fell in love with the class.” Sophie was initially teaching in studios but C19 has meant that she now runs all of her classes online. “The future of fitness is going to be a bit of a mix of in-person, online, virtual pre-record. I think it will be a whole host of things and you know what, that’s fantastic because it means it’s more accessible for people.” Sophie is looking to expand her Zumba business and her dream is to bring it together with the corporate world – you heard it here first!

The Key Learning Points:

1. That it is okay to change industries and have an unusual career path

2. The importance of providing proper support to people undergoing IVF and surrogacy processes

3. Some suggested coping mechanisms for if you have sadly been told you are unable to have children, from the perspective of someone who has been through this themselves

This week on the remote Risky Mix Podcast we’re joined by Ella Harper, Executive National Vice President with the health and beauty brand Arbonne. Ella has a varied career background, as a designer, entrepreneur, coach and counsellor. Amongst many things, Ella works as a counsellor for women who are undergoing IVF treatment and/or surrogacy.

Ella explains that she’s had somewhat of a wiggly career: “My career journey is really more of an adventure than a straight path in one particular chosen field.” She started working at 11 years old, clearing tables in a restaurant, and explains that she has a very high work ethic. She was led into graphic design after studying it in university and later moved into the production side of design and advertising. Ella was a session singer in the music industry for a while, exchanging her graphic design background for music theatre school. Then after realising that there was a limit to the success that she would see in any of the companies that she worked for, Ella decided to become her own boss and set up an interior design business, a marketing strategy business and an Arbonne ‘franchise’. When asked where she found the courage to take the steps that she has in her career, Ella explains that there’s an element of her life that gives her courage to step into new situations, which is that she became a foster child after her parents died when she was a teenager: “I’ve been the incomer, I’ve been the guest, for the majority of my life.”

During this time Ella was also trying to start a family and went through IVF and surrogacy, adding “they were life experiences!” Ella explains that she naturally fell into a counselling role, supporting other people who were going through the same IVF and surrogacy processes. “My forte is helping people come through the other side of things when there was no baby. What happens next? Because I’m living proof that actually there is life beyond IVF.”

Ella adds that when she was having her own treatments, the only counselling offered was quite generic, often focused on grief, there wasn’t any specific IVF support. Ella explains that men and women respond quite differently to fertility treatment because of different coping strategies: “A woman just expects, that at one point, she is going to have the choice to have children. That’s what we’re brought up to believe because that’s what most people do.” She continues: “The idea that a woman can have a baby is inherently female. It’s also a part of my female identity that I am able to conceive a child… and be a mother. When you find out that you can’t do that, there’s a part of you that dies.”

Ella wasn’t able to have children and understands the impact that this can have on women’s and couple’s lives. Ella embraced her position as an aunty and lives by her core regime to “create a magnificent life” as “There are all kinds of wonderful creative ways for women to enable themselves to live fulfilling quality lives.” Ella advises women to find their “things” - maybe that’s a change of career or embracing certain hobbies. “It is much easier to blame than take charge of your own life” to which Ella advises that when feeling completely out of control, you just have to find ways to build your armour.

Anybody listening in who is looking for some additional help around fertility treatment, please do contact Ella on [email protected] for free support.

The Key Learning Points:

1. The impact of balancing motherhood whilst working, and the effect it can have on career progression.

2. A view on the extent to which gender equality has been implemented in the workplace and how women can still experience a delay in career progression when they reach their mid-30s.

3. The importance of the ‘Lift as you Climb’ community in providing women with the opportunity to share tips and experiences with other women across all ages and industries.

Today on the remote Risky Mix Podcast we’re joined by two guests – Elizabeth Jenkin and Jane Gibbon, ladies who co-founded and now run the Lift As You Climb network – an organisation that aims to harness the vast skills and collaborative power of women across ages and industries to support growth.

Jane is a HR director, originally from the US but has lived here for 18 years. Elizabeth has worked in insurance for 25 years – initially in underwriting, then 18 years at Aon and she now works for an insurtech disruptor. Jane explains that her passion is authenticity, and she loves creating workplaces that allow employees to be themselves. Elizabeth is passionate about creating a legacy where women have fewer speed bumps in their careers. Both ladies are balancing motherhood with successful careers. In regards to support for women in the workplace, Jane adds: “There’s been some progress, but we still hit the same stumbling points around women having to balance work and home."

Elizabeth feels that awareness has increased, and businesses are today placing more focus on equality from a gender and race perspective but asks “has it really moved the dial, particularly in terms of senior management, senior female leaders? I don’t think it has.” Jane adds that younger generations may have seen a change because companies are better at recruiting for diversity and providing equal opportunities for all graduates, but people in the middle of their careers are still being impacted – it’s women in their 30s. One of the big reasons for this is that many women at this point choose to start a family, and that time out of work can really impact progression.

For Elizabeth, it’s important to have role models in the workplace who say it’s okay to take that time out: “Had those people not been in my career I have no idea what my career trajectory would have been.” Elizabeth explains that she “took her foot off the gas” when she was trying for a baby, but admits that she regrets this decision, adding: “I lost time” and advises other women going through a similar situation to keep going, to not only avoid that loss of time but also the earning power.

The conversation moves onto the Lift As You Climb (LAYC) community, which is there to support women throughout their careers. The idea was to build a network for women, across multiple generations and industries, who could learn from one another. The ladies share their experience of more traditional networking events: “We would go to these events, we would generally see the same people, they were generally about the same age as us, they were generally the same colour as us, they probably earnt about the same money as us.” With LAYC they've chosen a refreshing format of themed events, guest speakers and interactive group work. They want their members to be able to take back learnings from the events and really act on them.

You can find details of the network at www.liftasyouclimb.co.uk where you can also join the network, and follow them on Linkedin for thought leadership content and event information.

InsTech London podcast episode: https://www.instech.london/podcast/katie-crook-davies-raj-variyar-risky-mix-podcast-hosts-diversity-inclusion-innovation

The Key Learning Points:

1. The important role that diversity plays in providing new perspectives and driving innovation within businesses

2. Tips for companies to enact cultural shifts within their workplaces 

3. How to communicate with employees to understand their perspective of the workplace culture and what they value about the company

Today on the remote Risky Mix Podcast we’re joined by Heather Frost, founder and managing director of People and Practice. Heather is an executive coach and has been previously described as strategic glue, the human face of strategy, mentor, guide, adviser, agitator and coach. Heather has an interesting perspective on how businesses can think in a more diverse and inclusive way.

Heather grew up in Australia and explains that her passion for experience lead to her spending a number of years travelling the world. One of her biggest trips was undoubtedly the 18-month overland journey from India, through China across Mongolia and Russia, through the Baltics and into Italy! For Heather, “rocking up in a new city, no job, no apartment” was the norm and often “staying put was the most unusual piece!” Heather adds that she never likes to be bound by what everybody else thinks is normal. She trusts her gut, which sometimes means going against the grain and other’s opinions: “The more crazy what I’ve been doing is, the better it usually ends up panning out in the end.” 

The conversation moves onto Heather setting up her own business - People and Practice. She adds: “I’m fascinated by this blend of what work gives and takes from people.” A big part of what Heather supports businesses with is cultural change. She adds that many people think about culture as a fuzzy concept, something that HR is in charge of and something that is to do with competencies and behaviours. She goes on to explain that if you really look at the culture of an organisation, you see that “it’s the oil, it’s the engine that makes it run. It’s everything there.” Making a cultural shift is no small task and Heather explains that many look first at their operating models and start to create a plan, putting in place timescales for change, but adds that it can take several years for an organisation to go through this process, by which point they may, in fact, need to start the whole process over again. For this reason, Heather believes that it’s important to focus on the enablers and build continuous resilience into a business. 

For Heather, diversity of thinking is key to making cultural shifts: “If you start with diversity of thinking, all of the other parts and aspects of diversity and inclusion that we want to encourage, usually knock-on from that.” Embracing new perspectives and ways of thinking will help to drive change and innovation. Heather feels that companies focus a lot on skillsets, but much less on how differently people think, and when asked for her top tips for businesses looking to make a cultural shift she says: “Don’t be afraid of messiness or complexity!” She encourages businesses to avoid oversimplification and bring different minds in. Companies often think about what their employees need and the value set that they want to see. Heather’s advice is to “ask the people! What do people believe the culture in the organisation, at all levels, is? Why did they join? Why are they still there?” It’s the values that you don’t ever need to voice that people talk about, the ones that are being lived day in and day out.

InsTech London podcast episode: https://www.instech.london/podcast/katie-crook-davies-raj-variyar-risky-mix-podcast-hosts-diversity-inclusion-innovation

The Key Learning Points:

1. The support that some companies offer to women who are trying to balance work and motherhood

2. That stepping out of your comfort zone and embracing a career change should not always be frowned upon

3. The extent to which COVID-19 has changed the future of insurance and the types of claims people make

Today on the remote Risky Mix Podcast we’re joined by Helen Mann, innovation and change lead within the claims department at Aviva.  Helen has spent an amazing 28 years at Aviva and is here today to tell us more about her impressive career in the general insurance claims space.

Helen left school at 16 years old and started exploring her career options. She explains that money talked at the time, and she was attracted to an insurance claims role which paid over £6,000 a year, which at the time was a “gamechanger salary”. 28 years later, and Helen is still at Aviva! She’s held a number of claims roles, working her way up through the ranks, and explains that most of her career has been spent as a people leader. “People leadership roles are incredibly rewarding but also challenging. You learn so much about yourself and others.” In more recent years Helen moved into planning and innovation type roles, motivated by a desire to affect change on a larger scale. She adds, “this is what gets me up in the morning!” 

When asked about her transition away from technical claims positions into more generalist roles, Helen says: “At the time it did feel quite scary to move from an area that you have deep knowledge in, to move to something else where you have an understanding but you lack that depth of knowledge that you’ve really relied on in previous roles.” But explains that if there’s even some similarity between different roles it should be a relatively easy move and wouldn’t discourage anyone from trying something different. Helen’s career moves haven’t always been by design, some have been out of necessity. Helen explains that when she had her first son there was no such thing as flexible working. So, in order to balance her career with childcare, she had to apply for a new part-time job within Aviva, which moved her into a different area of the business. She adds that things are very different today: “We’re able to accommodate different working patterns to suit childcare. Things have changed so much for the better.” 

We move on to discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the insurance industry, in particular, general insurance claims. Helen adds that Aviva has seen an increase in fire claims as more people are enjoying better weather and BBQs. In addition, refuse collection sites have been closed, so people have been choosing to burn materials at home. “Fire claims aren’t common, but they can be quite catastrophic when they do happen.” Aviva has been working with the fire brigade to get messages out around this and helping people to reduce fire risk. “We’ve also seen a bit of a spike in the theft of bicycle claims.” Helen explains that demand for cycling has gone up, and it’s been harder to find a bike, so people are finding other ways of fulfilling that demand. 

We also speak about how the pandemic will change, if at all, the way that people think about insurance. Helen’s view is that “where people can afford to pay for products that give them certainty, they will.” However, talk of mass redundancies and pay cuts mean that this is not going to be easy for many people. “The gap between the haves and the have nots is getting wider and there’s a responsibility on all of us to look out for that and make sure that we’re all doing our best to reduce that gap.”