I'm honoured to accept LinkedIn's invitation to be a global influencer

I am honoured to accept LinkedIn’s invitation to be a global influencer, and join an esteemed collective of other thinkers, leaders and innovators. Over the last five years, I have come to appreciate the power of the LinkedIn platform and how it facilitates connectivity and sharing of valuable insights.

Let’s be real though, I understand that financial services and insurance are not necessarily perceived as “sexy” from the outside. One typically thinks of incumbent institutions with staid business models and value propositions that aren’t particularly client-centric or compelling. I can assure you, nothing could be further from the truth. And having the opportunity to share our experience and engage on what the future of financial services may look like, with others on LinkedIn, is exciting for me.

For one, our industry operates in an environment of burgeoning depth and complexity – presenting infinite room for learning. Epigenetics. The crisis of living too long. Changing regulation. Data privacy. Digital health. Stakeholder capitalism. Epidemiology. The race to net zero. Healthspan. I could go on.

Second, the world faces profound challenges, from climate change, to health and ageing, and socio-economic resilience. Our industry is at the nexus of these dilemmas with a unique platform - and I would argue role - to develop policy and products to drive change.

You see, business models globally are under pressure to innovate and COVID-19 has been the latest cause and proof. Three trends in particular come to mind: the rise of purpose-led business models, the accelerated rush online, and the recognition that the ability to change behaviour is central to addressing the world’s most pressing problems.

Financial services organisations, and insurers in particular, are faced with an acute manifestation of these trends.

In his 2022 Letter to CEOs, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink underscored the shift in capitalism’s focus from profit-making to sustainability - and the prerogative for organisations such as our own to shape society and act as catalysts for change. To enable this, accelerated digital transformation and personalisation in our space is fundamental, central to which are the priorities McKinsey frames - the need to scale the impact from data and analytics and modernise core technology platforms. Orchestrating and embracing ecosystems is a core means of achieving this, from healthcare and mobility to the connected home. And finally, COVID-19 has accelerated the link between health, wellness, resilience and death. The insurer’s duty in this context is to move beyond reimbursement for damage and controlling losses, to incentivising better behaviour.

Simply put, when all this comes together, the industry is ripe for innovation and insurgency. The ask is both clear in its expectation and complex in the execution it demands: Help customers live longer in better health and wealth; and do so by moving beyond static pricing to dynamic pricing that takes demographics AND behaviour into account, employing InsurTech platforms to roll out targeted behaviour change interventions that help individuals reduce risk and better navigate the health system.

I look forward to sharing our perspectives on this. I also look forward to sharing thoughts on my personal passion, purpose-centred leadership. Particularly, and rooted in behavioural science, the cognitive flaws that impede smart and sophisticated decision making - and thereby limit our leadership impact at work, in our communities, and at home.

What topics in our space are of interest to you?

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