Foreign.

Hello and welcome to beyond the Desk, the podcast where I take a deep dive into the careers of some of the most influential and inspiring leaders in the technology transformation and operations space within global insurance and insurtech.

I'm your host, Mark Thomas, and every week I'll be sitting down with industry trailblazers who are driving innovation and modernization within the insurance sector.

We'll explore their personal journeys, from their early backgrounds and the pivotal moments that shape their careers to the challenges they've had to overcome, the lessons they've learned along the way, and of course, the big wins that have defined their professional journey so far.

But it's not just about their successes.

It's about what you and I can take away from their experiences and the advice they have for anyone wanting to follow in similar footsteps.

Whether you're just starting out or looking to level up your career in the insurance or insuretech world, this podcast is packed with valuable insights and inspiration.

So grab your headphones, get comfortable, and let's jump into beyond the Desk.

Samesh.

Welcome to beyond the Desk podcast.

How you doing?

Very good, thank you.

Thank you for having me.

Pleasure.

Right, let's get straight into it.

So I always, always like to start the podcast with going right back to your kind of early days, but before that let's, let's just get an intro into kind of who you are, current situation, job, etc.

And then we'll, we'll go right back to the start and evolve it from there.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean I'll keep my intro spiel to a minimum.

Yeah.

So I have about 20 years of experience within the insur market in different roles from underwriting to operations to change and transformation.

Now over the last 15 years I've been in change and transformation, mainly looking at sort of non technology related transformation, but always using technology as an additional lever.

My career has taken me through different organizations, big ones like Allianz, into more sort of mid tier to more, you know, I would say entrepreneurial organizations like Beesley, which where I'm currently heading the claims transformation role.

And in between I had a splatter of consulting experience as well, the Last1 with PwC in their operational transformation work stream.

Nice.

Okay, well we'll definitely get all into that.

So if we go right back to the start, talk to me a little bit about kind of how you first kind of got into the kind of world of technology and transfer.

Was it something you were into as a kid?

Like what was the upbringing like and what did that look like?

No, thank you.

I Mean, it's an interesting one because I always consider myself an accidental sort of technologist, if I can even call that way.

I mean, I was always a very inquisitive kid.

I would say I liked structure a little bit, organization, things like that.

But at the same time, I was not very, like, academic oriented in any ways, really.

Okay.

I did my undergrad in pharmaceutical sciences.

Okay.

And I had no idea that I would come into insurance at that point.

I went from after my studies, I went into pharmaceutical sales marketing.

So that was quite exciting, you know, travels and, you know, sort of sales pitches and so on, so forth.

So that was quite, quite all right.

And, you know, it was very accidental that I come into this insurance role.

I started with Allianz, as I mentioned before, and I was hired as an underwriter onto their retail insurance, which is home and motor insurance, at that point.

And I started, started as a technical underwriter, moved on to operations, managing a small team of people, customer service, you know, sort of telesales kind of teams.

From there I went into a bit of operational excellence, so Six Sigma, that kind of trainings.

And that was all part of the role itself.

But I fell in love so much into that kind of, you know, because it gave me structure, it gave me sort of problem solving opportunities and so on.

That was much beyond, you know, what you would typically see as an operational role.

That's what kind of, you know, triggered my interest in change, transformation, continuous improvement, these kind of topics.

And from there, you know, as I said, Last 15 years I've been only doing, you know, change and transformation in different capacities.

So, so, so, I mean, that's definitely a first on the podcast, the pharmaceutical background.

So what, what made you, what made you flip?

What was the.

Was it just kind of an academic, kind of organic.

Sorry, just kind of flip into that where you saw an opportunity?

Or was it.

Was it something that you had a real kind of thought to actually do, like you did it on purpose?

How did that, how did that come about?

I would say it's.

It's a mix of things.

One was more on the personal side.

I wanted to kind of, you know, be in a.

In a job which is a little bit more stable in the sense that, you know, not so much travel involved and so on and so forth.

But funny enough, I ended up traveling more international after that.

But.

But that was on the personal side, the.

On the other side, the, you know, the, the role itself of an underwriter.

I had never heard about that till that point, but it sounded really good.

I Had some conversations with some of the colleagues who had worked at that point in Allianz and it seemed to be really interesting from how do you take a vague set of requirements from the customer and provide solutions to address their risk issues?

So that sounded really interesting and that's how I sort of went into that role and then things evolved from there and kind of stuck to it for the last 20 years.

So how long did you actually.

Did you train as an underwriter then off the back of that?

And how long did you do that role for?

Yeah, so I was in underwriting, I would say for about a year and a half.

Moved on to then people management on the customer service side, still doing a little bit of underwriting.

So I would say in the first four years I had done underwriting to some extent.

Yeah, yeah.

So, so talk to me about when the first, when the kind of was it was the transition into delivery transformation, which is kind of what you, what you tend to do more of now.

Was that, was that a gradual thing?

Because, because you, you, I mean, I think you do.

You tend to see people come from two different sides, right?

They've come from the technology and they transformation route.

They were a BA and they work their way up in that, that very typical route or, or they come from the business, which is obviously where you've come from.

So at what point did that kind of transition happen and that move into that type of role?

It was interesting in my case particularly, it was kind of a mix of both.

So I had my technical background, which is underwriting operations at that point, maybe four or five years, and there was an opportunity to look at transitioning some of the processes from onshore teams to an offshore center.

And so they wanted a mix of BA skills, plus process mapping skills and also understanding of the business as well on the underwriting and operations side.

So I kind of fit neatly into that and that's when I started kind of that journey that automatically evolved into looking beyond just the transition of roles, but to look at how can we design new processes to make it fit for, you know, moving to another location or, you know, roles and responsibilities of people.

How do you sort of look at organizational design?

How do you look at continuous improvement?

So those were kind of my natural progression.

And at some point it kind of then evolved into full fledged transformation where we look at larger problem statements, which is, you know, how can we structure the business to address some of the customer requirements of the, you know, sort of front end.

And, and those were the topics.

Then I started handling and that got me into this kind of change and transformation roles.

Yeah, so it seems like it was a kind of organic evolution over a period of time rather than you just kind of standing there and saying actually I think that's the role I want to do and going headstrong into that.

Okay, that's interesting.

So I mean, I don't want to get too much into the role at the moment, but tell us a little bit about what's kind of big on your agenda at the moment and what you've been doing in the more recent past.

So.

So the last one year I've been working as head of Claims transformation within Beazley and Beazly.

As you know, it's a specialty insurer within the London market with global presence, one of the fast growing London based syndicates.

My mandate is to look at how to bring scale and structure the way we manage change within claims environment.

And some of the topics, typical topics would be how do you streamline the processes which we follow today?

How do you make it scalable?

Efficiency, how do you bring efficiency into the way we do things?

What are some of the ways in which we can optimize our technology footprint to suit the user requirements internally as well as our customer requirements.

So these are some of the topics that we typically handle.

Within the claims transformation area there's also the sort of the BAU element which is how do you ensure controls and sort of governance, you know, both internal as well as the regulatory requirements when we are designing new processes and when we are, you know, sort of implementing existing processes as well.

So that's kind of in a nutshell what the role entails.

Yeah.

So one thing I noticed about your background was doing a bit of research is that you've, throughout your career you've done a little bit in consulting and then into some kind of, majority of the time has been in carriers and that kind of thing.

Tell me a little bit about what that looks like.

So I mean obviously the move to PwC a few years ago, before Beasley, what, what made you kind of make that move into consulting and how was that?

I mean, I think lots of people look at that kind of thing and tend to go from one to the other and I imagine it's quite a different role.

But, but yeah, what were the thought, what was the thought and the thinking behind that and how did that kind of pan out?

I think, you know, it was more of a deliberate choice rather, than, you know, sort of accidental.

The other thing is also that I had been in contact and worked very Closely with consultant, external consultants.

Even when I was with carriers, like for example with Allianz, when we were running big programs, we had People from McKinsey, Bain and others who would support us in strategy work and sort of defining, designing and so on.

So it was always sort of.

And I have worked in close proximity to these experts and at some point within my career I wanted to get an external perspective of how things work outside.

I was in insurance for almost 15 years at that point.

I wanted to get an external perspective, an outside view of how things work even beyond insurance.

And insurance was not at the cutting edge of change in technology at that point.

So PwC offered me a great opportunity in that sense.

Even though I was part of their financial services sort of practice, I could do work for some of their other clients in retail for instance, or government sector and so on.

And that gives you a much broader perspective of what are the change opportunities and sort of, you know, even the way we manage change in other sectors, big transformation programs like HS2 and you know, sort of all those kind of topics.

So that was a real eye opener for me in understanding that the same problems exist in different sectors, but it's addressed in different ways depending on the maturity.

And so that gave me much more of an insight and outlook.

So coming back to the industry from that consulting world really gave me some good tools to implement within the sector as well.

Yeah, that's, that's really interesting.

So let's go into that, into a bit more detail.

So, so what did you, you mean, how long were you at Peter?

Is it a couple of years?

A couple of years?

Yes.

Yeah.

So, so what would you say the kind of the, the, the big things that you learn from, from that, that you, you touched on one there about the, the kind of similarities but, but equally differences at the same time.

But, but what, what were the.

Coming back to the industry, what, what did you kind of add to the, the toolbox as it were from that, from that, that.

Yeah.

I think the two main things I can point out is one is sort of the holistic view, always having that sort of bigger problem statement to start with.

Why are we doing this in the first place?

So getting that perspective, it's not very easy.

When you are working in an insurance company or any industry for a long time, you are always having blinkers and you are very much into your own comfort zone.

Whereas as a consultant you step back and really ask the key questions initially, why are we doing it?

What are we trying to solve?

What if we don't do this.

So those kind of questioning, that's really important.

The other thing is also speed of execution.

So in the industry generally we talk about projects which are multi year, which always takes, there's an inertia internally to the way we manage change.

Whereas when you come in as a consultant, there's an expectation that you do a sharp, short sort of intervention and you create impact in that short period of time.

So that's another learning I had from my experience with PwC.

Of course the people there are really intelligent.

You really bring in that generalist sort of view from different sectors and different engagements and to that particular problem statement.

So they bring in a lot of these different perspectives.

The other key thing that I learned there is you don't need to have the right, you know, sort of the answers all the time.

It's important that you ask the right questions in the beginning.

Right?

So, so that's another thing.

Experts, we tend to call ourselves as experts within the insurance industry.

We, we tend not to do.

We always think that, okay, we should have the answers always right.

So that's another perspective.

Do you think that there's.

Because there's an interesting point that I've picked up on that is, is that, that, that kind of consulting world, it seems to me that one of the biggest benefits that you have there is, is a variety of thinking from different industries and different experiences.

Yet we both know that in insurance that there is a, there is a real kind of, and typically an innate desire to want to have insurance experience like you just kind of touched on.

So do you think, do you think that's, do you think that's something that the industry should adopt more, is just kind of broader thinking, broader industry experience, etc.

Etc.

You mean it's kind of an ongoing debate, isn't it, like whether you actually need to have industry knowledge to do some of the kind of bigger roles.

I, my personal view is that we should have more outside perspectives and more outside skills, you know, brought into the insurance industry.

The main reason is that we have long been reliant on internal experts to solve problems, but we know that we haven't gone too far.

Compare it with banking, industry, investment management, they're far ahead of insurance at least 10 years ahead in terms of the thinking in terms of maturity and so on.

So my feeling is that we should be thinking more in terms of capability building and those capabilities can be, you know, should be external, you know, sourced from externally and that I see that changing within the industry as well.

Now I see more of people from different backgrounds coming in, more roles being created which are slightly agnostic of the sort of the expert, you know, sort of functions even within claims or underwriting.

You see people coming into strategy and you know, sort of change management and so on from outside the industry.

So it's a good trend, but we should accelerate that in my view.

Yeah.

You mean, do you think the blend is.

Because I guess there are, in the role that I do you see lots of different variety in thinking around, around that.

Right.

And you mean.

I think lots of the time it's lazy is maybe not the best way of putting it, but, but it is the root of least resistance in the sense that actually we hire someone for this job that has that experience, has done that exact same job, that that's probably the most obvious route to getting a good job done.

But it's really the long term, I think that is kind of affected by that.

You don't get a variety of thinking, you don't get different ways of doing things.

I mean claims is a, is a, is a particularly interesting topic because there's, there's numerous examples of big claims transformations that have not gone according to plan, have taken, taken longer.

Do you think it is a blend that you need like because are there, are there still some jobs, I.

E.

A claims transformation where you might need someone who's got a specific platform experience or do you think that the experience of, of doing big transformation and delivering big technology programs is more important and being successful doing that?

It's an interesting question and I mean I don't think I will have the silver bullet like the precise answer, but the way I would look at it is how are the requirements and the external world changing?

Our customers are going through change in a very fast paced environment.

It's not so linear in terms of their requirements and the complexities and risk and so on and so forth.

So we should also think about internally how do we accelerate our own capability building?

And I would argue that looking at the same kind of skill sets that worked 10 years before is not going to get us in the next 10 years.

So because the risks are more diverse and unknown, the avenues or solutions are so diverse as well.

I think we need a good blend within our teams and there might be one or two experts who is definitely needed to bring that historical perspective and what works, what doesn't.

But I think we need people who are much more experienced in technology in future sort of strategy thinking and so on.

So yeah, to your question, definitely we need a much broader sort of blend within these Kind of teams.

It'd be interesting.

I'm keen to get into a little bit about the claims stuff as well.

Where do you see claims transformation?

I've been hearing about that and been involved from afar for what seems like kind of of 10, 15 years now.

There's always what, there's always one or two kind of big programs going on in the insurance space.

Where do you see the kind of future of that moving forward?

You've obviously been engrossed in it in one of the major London market insurers for the last kind of 12 months or so.

What does the kind of future look like on the claims front and how is that kind of, how are they adapting to that kind of pace of change with technology?

I would say, you know, from my little experience, claims is probably one of the areas which is least, you know, sort of developed in terms of transformation.

And so there is a lot of opportunity there.

There are a couple of things that I see as prominent themes there.

One is definitely, you know, sort of claims is the main service that we are offering to our clients.

It is, it is getting much more attention now, both externally from a regulatory perspective, but also internally as well.

So we have more board members who are representing claims in all these big organizations and so there is much more of an understanding and appreciation of claims.

The third thing is we have been constrained in terms of technology investments and other investments within the claims and sort of function brought generally across the industry for a long time.

So it is ripe for sort of transformation.

What are the key themes that would be relevant in the coming maybe, I don't know, three years, five years time?

For me, one thing definitely is the cost consciousness.

What is the right balance between cost of claims versus the customer service that we are offering?

That is definitely one thing.

The second is technology.

As I said, getting claims to the right level of technology in terms of platforms, in terms of integration with external, you know, sort of sources and also making it easy for our customers, reducing the friction in the, in the user journeys.

And probably the third is in terms of capability building.

It is much more important now because most of the surveys show that in the next five years, London market will have a significant shortage in terms of claims talent, experienced claims talent.

So how are we looking at building that capability internally?

We can't wait for this five years for the next generation of claims experts to come.

We'll have to rethink the way we are managing knowledge with the way we are managing our claims processes, the way we are thinking about the claims adjuster of the future in terms of the role itself.

So those I think will be the key themes from my perspective.

So one is about the cost and the consciousness about that commercial consciousness.

The second is in terms of technology investments and third, in terms of people.

Interesting.

The underinvestment in claims is that.

What's your view on that?

What do you think the reason behind that is that?

And why is it now more.

I mean, I can, I can make the assumption that is now more in the spotlight because customer service and doing a good job and all that kind of thing is a lot more prominent.

People's expectations are a lot higher especially and they're used to doing things a lot more quickly with technology and stuff like that in just everyday life.

So.

So the expectation that the kind of bar is raising, rising.

Sorry, but what do you think has been underestimated, invested in, in the past?

I think there might be multiple factors involved here.

My hypothesis is that claims was never looked at as a front office function in the past and hence everything.

I mean, when you think about the portfolio change, investments, you're thinking about front end functions first, underwriting, even operations.

But claims probably as an afterthought.

So that means you don't have the right sort of level of attention and investments as well.

The second is also claims is.

It's the old way of thinking, which is if it's not broken, then why fix it?

And claims is a very sensitive area.

You know that if something is not right, you get the impact.

You sort of feel the impact immediately.

Right?

There is no like second chance.

So.

So that's where most of the people, most of the leaders are slightly hesitant in sort of, you know, making, you know, sort of that, that step up.

The other thing is also a lot of dependency on the other functions.

The claim sits in a very neat nice sort of junction where you need to feed in information for the underwriting and the pricing to, you know, be sort of sensitive to the changes in the risk environment.

But also you are feeding information to your sort of actuarial, your compliance and so on and so forth.

So it sits in a little bit of a triangle area.

And so it's very, I would say you don't want to mess with it in a lot of the cases.

So that's probably, at least in my view, that's probably one of the reasons why.

But again, I should not be broad brushing it.

You find that different sectors within the insurance treat this differently.

So in the retail, for example, there's much more attention because claims is an integral part of the customer life cycle.

And so it has, you know, got the investments in terms of technology and, and you know, other investments.

But on the, maybe the commercial specialty side it is less so.

Yeah, I mean, I guess there's a volume thing there as well, isn't there?

That the, the, there's a, you're less likely to make a commercial claim than maybe a kind of personal line lines claim on their, on a car or something like that.

But.

And I guess the commercial, they probably don't shout quite as loud on Twitter or something like that.

But it's equally slightly different audience and slightly different way of getting feedback.

You made a good point about the volumes because that's another element because whenever you are, I mean the traditional way of looking at investment will be return on investment, right.

So the quantification of that return on investment was always very, very much skewed towards the volume.

So where you have high transaction volume you can make a business case.

Whereas where there is, you know, claims is such a sort of, I would say an amorphous sort of, you know, function and the value is so amorphous you can't really.

Or it's quite challenging for organizations to quantify the impact and hence the investment, you know, sort of business cases will, they will struggle as well.

And that's, that's more felt on the commercial than the retail.

Do you find that as well?

Is, I mean again my knowledge of it is limited but, but in the retail market people kind of flip flop from insurer.

There's, there's very little loyalty.

It's normally a kind of a price based war which I imagine there is an element of that still in the specialty market.

But some of those, those claims that you're paying out if you do a bad job, that client that could be worth millions is therefore looking for potentially someone else to put their kind of business to someone else.

So I think certainly the perception would be in the market that in the personal line space people that the insurers have limited care on whether or not their customers stay with them.

I think they'd probably say something slightly different, but I guess that's even more important in the specialty market.

You don't want to lose those clients because especially the big ones, they don't come around too often.

You've got to make sure you do a good job.

So therefore messing with the process and changing anything around it that makes it more difficult for customers is slightly more problematic and can have slightly grave consequences if you don't get it right.

I agree with that and I mean just to add on to that, on the commercial market side or commercial insurance side, the moment of truth, because you have got these long tail claims, the moment of truth is not once and done, it is much more consistent.

So you need to provide consistent and sort of repeatable service from a claims point of view.

So you need to have standardized and you need to have a very organized way of managing these claims.

But then on the retail side the moment of truth is really claims and it's a short tail business.

Hence you are much more likely to have claims in the year compared to a commercial sector.

So there's much more attention to claims, the way the claims journey is mapped and sort of managed on the retail side, whereas on the commercial side it's much more around the cost of acquisition of a client is much higher, hence you want to retain them, hence you need to have tailored approaches to those clients, at least the key segments that you want to retain.

And hence as you said, there is less appetite for making any changes there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, makes sense.

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Now let's get back to today's episode and I just wanted to touch on the bit that you mentioned about the talent.

So what.

What what's again similar question really.

What.

What's the thinking behind why is there a lack of talent?

And and and will will the same kind of talent be needed with with with kind of AI?

And I couldn't go through a podcast about mentioning AI, but yeah, I mean is that Is how, how's, how do you think that's going to affect the, the kind that's needed in claims?

Is it going to change much and why do you think there's that kind of lack of it at the moment?

Definitely the simple answer is yes.

The role of a claims adjuster in the future will be really different from what we are doing today.

A couple of things, when I mentioned about the sort of the gap in terms of the talent availability maybe in the short term is because the way we are managing the knowledge and the way we are managing progression of talent internally right now, it's very much based on the number of years of experience.

And so you start with simple cases and over time you build up the expertise on complex cases and that kind of, I would say the approach will not fit the new environment because the complexity of risks are changing, hence there is no historical precedent or there will be less historical precedents.

To look back and say that, okay, I've worked on simple cases before on these kind of cyber instances and now I can handle complex ones.

On the cyber case.

It is not going to be that way.

It will be much more, you know, sort of exponential the learning that you need to have.

Hence we need to rethink the way we are managing knowledge internally, the way we train people, the way we allocate cases to people.

Those things will need to change.

The second element is also about what is the type of sort of skill sets and capabilities we need.

AI will definitely have a much bigger impact than many of the other things, other technologies because one is the impact on the risk side that the genai will be creating on our customers on the nature of the risk itself.

Hence understanding it is really important from a claims adjuster point of view.

The other is how do we sort of use genai in a much more constructive way to help make the right decisions.

So you would always have the person in the loop, which is really important, but at the same time, how can we facilitate the decision making, how can we make them more consistent and so on.

Those would be, I think, the initial use cases for AI.

Yeah, it's an interesting one because the assumption, and we've certainly seen each other at a few conferences, there's such a variety of thinking in how AI is going to affect insurance.

It certainly seems like the general message is it's not going to eradicate jobs, it's just going to allow those people to focus more on the key, the tasks and the kind of high value stuff which is, which is kind of where it's at, at the moment, if that really.

But do you see there being some.

That the types of people.

You mean, you mean touched a little bit there on the types of people is what you mean that the fact that people will need to be able to not just do that kind of logical.

Once you've got three years experience, you can handle this level of case and once you've got six years of experience, you can move up the curve gradually at that.

People will need to get up the curve more quickly.

Is that, is that what you mean?

That is correct, yes.

And that's.

Why is that, what's the.

I mean that's primarily my hypothesis is that because the nature of the claims will be changing.

Right.

And so we will have less or we will have to rely less on our accumulated knowledge and our historical knowledge to handle those new cases.

Right.

So.

So that means even if I have a, I have 10 years of experience, 20 years of experience handling certain types of claims, tomorrow's claims are quite different.

So that doesn't help me with that.

20 years of experience, I would say extrapolating it for impact as well.

But so the type of learning will have to be different, the skill sets will have to be different people.

The claims adjuster will have to be much more, I would say proficient or at least suited for interacting with technology in a much better way.

So that's one thing.

The second is also how do we treat data, the importance of data and understanding.

How do we sort of join up different data sets and make those decisions?

That's going to be slightly different compared to the past as well because we will have to more and more rely on multiple data sources, external data sources, even from social media perhaps and things like that, which is quite different today.

We are relying on systemized data, structured data in most cases to make those decisions.

So those are the adaptations that the new claims adjudicator in future has to be ready for.

Yeah, I guess I'm going to take that into a slightly broader question.

It might be a tough one to answer.

But where do you see that then?

AI is obviously big everywhere right now.

It's the hot topic in every industry.

Insurance is no different.

Where do you see the next kind of two, three years, not just with AI, but insurance technology and transformation in general?

What do you see as the kind of the big ticket things that people are going to have to kind of get their head around and the changes?

I think definitely one is getting integrated ecosystem in terms of the platforms that we are using.

It used to be or it's still in large cases standalone platforms for underwriting for claims and or any of these functions and the kind of interactions between these platforms are quite limited.

It will be much more free flowing.

Data has to flow between these multiple systems more seamlessly in future if we have to accelerate the way we make decisions, the consistency in decision making and all those things.

So I think there will be a lot of emphasis on getting those platforms into an integrated sort of an ecosystem.

That is definitely one.

The other thing is also around the roles, the roles that will be needed within our ecosystem.

Traditionally we used to have IT or technology team separate from our sort of business teams.

I think there will be much more of these product owner kind of roles within, sitting within the business who will understand that or be the bridge between what the business is looking for in terms of the future requirements, in terms of those future needs and how that can be translated into local development in our platform.

So those kind of roles I think will be more relevant in future as well.

And on the IT side as well there will be much more sort of fluid sort of roles which doesn't need to be strictly IT from a technology stack understanding, but more in terms of broader understanding of what's out there in the open in terms of solutions and how can we meet those business requirements.

And one other change that I'm seeing now is less reliance on internal technology folks, more reliant on or more depending on the ecosystems outside.

So we rely more on vendor partners to provide a lot of those capabilities and skillsets so you don't have to insource everything.

You can rely on that ecosystem.

It's interesting what you said there about the kind of getting everything on kind of one platform or one ecosystem and a combination of platform.

I think that's like the utopia for most places.

I mean do you think that's.

That's from what I've seen that's a real big job in lots of insurers and something that generally have been trying to do for quite a long time and not necessarily overly successful at.

So do you think there, there is an awareness and an understanding and acceptance from senior execs that that is that what needs to be done and therefore as a result of that the investment to go with it.

Because it's one thing thinking that that's what you've got to do.

It's a different ball game paying for it and, and executing it.

Right?

Yeah, it's a hard one to answer.

I think definitely the appreciation is there that we need to be much more connected in terms of our systems in terms of our data and user experience as well.

How we get there, I think it'll depend also in terms of the investment from our technology vendors, for instance.

So I'll give you an example.

Guidewire and a lot of the other platforms today, they're investing much more on their cloud versions and they're investing on interoperability with other systems as well.

So those kind of options allow the business leaders then to think about how can we now leverage these new capabilities.

We don't have to build everything in house, we don't have to build everything in one system.

We can have multiple plugins which can provide those additional capabilities in terms of automation, in terms of insights generation, in terms of summarization and all those things.

So I think those factors would help the leaders to get to those decisions much easier.

But as you said, it's not an easy thing, primarily because there's a lot of legacy sort of investments that has already gone into.

How do you then capitalize those?

So there's always that give and take.

Take.

Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

So I, I guess like one of the things I always like to talk about in the podcast is, is to just delve into a little bit about the, the kind of advice and, and stuff.

Like lots of people that listen are people that would be looking to get into more senior roles and, and so on and so forth.

So if, if there was someone listening that wanted to, to kind of get into transformation would take a similar path.

What, what, what the, the kind of two or three kind of bits of snippets of advice from Sumesh's career that you would, you would pass on to someone else.

I think what worked for me, I wouldn't say it's an advice, but what worked for me, that's fine, we'll take it.

Was that one, you try and find what you really enjoy doing and do it, you know, the best way possible.

Yeah, that has worked for me, really.

So I've, I've enjoyed what I've been doing over the last, you know, for 15, 20 years.

The second is learning never ends.

And you constantly need to keep yourself open minded to learn new things and be, you know, either it's technical, soft skills, whatever it is, you need to constantly keep yourself kind of relevant as well.

And the third thing is also that you have to be flexible enough to kind of pivot when needed.

You might think that this is the right direction you want to take, this is the right opportunity you want to get into.

At some point you need to think yourself as an entrepreneur from an entrepreneurial way that is that the right decision that I've made or is that the right path that I've taken and be able to find an alternative?

This is where maybe the fourth point, which is finding a mentor and having a role model is really important as well.

So that you can then, you know, kind of either compare what would it, what would they do in this kind of situation, or even talk to them and try and get some, you know, advice in, in terms of how to go about.

So I think these, these are things which I would say are really have really helped me in, in my career.

You know, you're going to have loads of people reach out and want to be now to, for you to be a mentor.

So.

And anyway, I get.

So there's a couple of points in there that I'd just like to get.

I guess let's go into a little bit more the bit that you said around kind of pivoting.

I'm always interested in people.

We touched on it a little bit earlier about variety.

Like one of the bits of advice that someone on, on the, the previous, on previous podcast gave me was kind of just take, take every opportunity basically, especially when you're young, take the opportunity, do something different and get that variety.

Especially in the early, early years.

Do you think that because you've, you've obviously got a huge amount of variety, not, not just in insurance but, but types of jobs, moving to consulting, doing the retail stuff now, London market, you mean, does that, do you think that's, that's a kind of superpower that people should, should try and get, get now?

Is it, I mean, has it held you in better stead that you've, you've had that variety?

Do you think I fully, you know, endorse that, that view that you need to have variety in terms of your experience.

Sometimes it can be a challenge as well because you become too much of a generalist and then, you know, you, it is quite hard.

But overall, from my perspective, having that broader view, that diverse view will definitely help you in sort of addressing different challenges from different perspectives and so on, so forth.

So variety, definitely I would fully support that.

But just a word of caution is don't do things just for the heck of doing it.

You should have a little bit of a game plan in terms of why you are doing something.

It might be really personal, but also it could be in the long run, how does that help in your professional career as well?

So diversity for the sake of diversity is probably not going to help, but you know, definitely.

Yeah.

Support that view.

So kind of the thinking is kind of, what am I going to get out of this?

What's the end, what's the end goal and what does it add to the toolbox?

And like all that kind of thing.

Skill set, experience, people, like network, those kind of, you know, things that, that we should be thinking about.

Yeah.

Okay.

And, and then, and then the, the, the one thing, I mean, not to focus too much on negative stuff, but, but what, what, what are some of the big, kind of big lessons you've learned over, over your career?

Like kind of mistakes you've made and, and, and stuff that you've learned off the back of it?

Like, you mean, what, what, what of the, what are the one or two things you don't want to go into?

Too many.

But, but yeah, what, what are the couple of things that you've, you've, you've big lessons you've learned over your career?

I don't want to.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I think one of the things I learned, and maybe I alluded to that in the initial stay phase, is you don't have to have always the answer.

Right.

And initially, when, when I started my career, I always thought that, okay, I need to find the answers for all problems and solve the world's problems.

Right.

And that doesn't always work.

No.

And, and it's even more important that you get other perspectives.

People are much smarter than you think, and there are definitely more smarter people than you.

So you always be open to other views and then make a sort of balanced decision in terms of what would work in this case and challenge those ideas.

So that is something which I learned sometimes the hard way, that you don't need to have the answers always.

The second thing is also the importance of having network within organizations, especially if somebody is coming into change and transformation.

Change is always dependent on people.

Regardless of how brilliant your solutions are, how brilliant your plans are, things will always fall flat when it touches people because people are different and hence having that understanding of people.

And you don't have to know everybody, you just need to know the people who know those user groups and those sets of people.

And sort of tapping into that, that's really important.

Early in my career, I never thought about the importance of people in that sense, but experience have taught me that that's one of the most critical element when you think about transformation and change.

So these may be one or two elements that I would say anybody who is going in that sort of path should be keeping in mind the People.

Thing is an interesting one because I guess there's also the element of the fact that having some kind of cheerleaders and supporters that can kind of get help when you're doing complex change, that lots of people are kind of used to their way of doing things, particularly in insurance, like getting a few people who can, who can fight your corner when you're not around and that kind of stuff like having that network and building those relationships, I think is, you mean, it's key in most jobs, isn't it?

But I think it's particularly in those, those roles where you're.

Yeah.

You're challenging the status quo and there's, there's lots of people that don't necessarily want that to be challenged or very used to doing it their way.

Well, look, we're coming towards the end of the podcast now.

I always.

The last section is just for a bit of fun.

Is, is, is some quick fire questions.

So if you're, you're geared up and ready.

The first one is which brand or company do you most admire and why?

I'd say not one, but maybe a couple of them.

Okay, so I like Tesla and SpaceX as well, primarily because they are innovative.

Yeah.

They are problem solvers rather than, you know, just go with the flow.

And, and three, they have personalities as well.

So, so I think those, you know, those are really attractive for me, I would say Beasley is also really a good brand that I enjoyed because of the focus on the people being bold and being doing the right thing and, and all that.

And their focus on diversity is really great.

So I've experienced that personally.

And, and so these are some of the brands I, I really, yeah.

Appreciate.

SpaceX is, is unbelievable, isn't it?

It's like, it's just some people say that, you know, they haven't made big difference.

They have just, you know, sort of incrementally made some change from what NASA used to do.

But I think the, the concept, from the concept to the execution, they've really, you know, sort of nailed it and so that has to be appreciated.

Yeah, I mean, I think for me, like, I mean, Elon's a bit of a divisive character, isn't it?

But the, for me, it's not necessarily about what they've necessarily achieved yet because there's plenty more Runway.

It's where they've come from.

Like, you mean.

Yeah, they haven't pushed it too much further past where governments have pushed it from.

But like, you mean, what's your expectation?

Right.

I mean, they Started from nothing to even compete to even get to the level on their own is massively impressive.

I'm definitely with you on that.

They're up there for me as well.

What's the one piece of advice that you wish someone had given you at the start of your career?

Yeah, O.

That's a tough one.

I'd go back to the, the point about, you know, you don't have to have the answers always more important will be asking the right questions.

I think that that's it.

That's definitely an advice I, I wish I had right at the beginning.

Yeah, I mean that's similar to actually what someone said to me once is the, the kind of two ears, one mouth thing like making sure you listen and take information.

So the next one is if you could swap jobs with anyone for a day, who would it be?

Oh, there's so many.

I, I'm a runner so I love running.

Yeah.

And I love sports in general.

Team sports mostly.

But I would really love to be in the position within a coaching team or a staff especially for a team, you know, sports like for example a running team or you know, basketball team or a football team and really try to understand what keeps these guys motivated.

How do you motivate these guys?

They're really at the top of like some of these runners, they have been doing this for five, 10 years.

How do you keep them motivated at that level and you know, even you know, beyond that.

So that always, you know, like fascinates me.

So yeah, that's probably an opportunity I will take.

Something like that.

Yeah.

It'd be good to get into the Man City dressing room right now.

I mean we're recording this probably won't go out till January but we're recording it just before Christmas and Man City are in a bit of a pickle right now.

But yeah, I mean that's a perfect example of a team where motivation.

I don't know if it's motivation or it's just to keep that going for as long.

It always comes to a bit of an end eventually, doesn't it?

But yeah, I think there's certainly some dressing rooms that would be interesting to get under the skin off.

I'm not sure what you'd find but the next one is what's the best non fiction or kind of work related book that you've ever read or you'd did you'd recommend.

I like Yuhal Harari's books primarily because you know, such clarity in thought and the way he tells the story.

He's A great storyteller.

Even when you listen to him, you know, sort of answer some of these complex questions in terms of humanity and the meaning of, you know, sort of where we are heading to and so on.

So he's a great example and I love his books.

Yeah, so that's, that's one of those.

Have you, have you read the Elon Muska autobiography at the Walter Isaacson one?

Yeah, I did.

Yeah.

I'm just, I'm just.

I've literally just started it.

So I mean, I'm kind of.

Hopefully I'm going to get through that over Christmas.

But is it good?

It is.

It is good.

Yeah.

It's quite a tough read, isn't it, at times.

A few people, I mean, I'm not a.

Not generally a good, big fan of autobiography.

Right.

And.

But this one, I like it.

The way it's put is much more direct and, you know, much more clear.

Yeah, he's got some big gigs.

Walter Isaacson and he did Steve Jobs as well.

Next one is, what's the best career decision you've ever made?

I think changing to change and transformation, like moving to that was a big decision for me at that time because I didn't know what I was getting into.

But at the same time I now can look back and say, yeah, I really loved, you know, what I've done in the last 15 years.

So that's one of the big sort of great decisions I've made.

And then the final one is if there was one person that you'd say you admire the most, who would it be and why?

I can't do one.

Okay, okay, give me.

You can give me a couple.

There's so many people who have, like, influenced me directly, indirectly, but if I come, you know, like take it close to my working career, I had lots of bosses or leaders who really influenced the way I thought about things and, you know, sort of even start, you know, still thinking about it.

Yeah.

Two people I would like to name is one, there's.

There's a former boss in Allianz.

When I was working in Allianz.

Her name is Claire McDonald.

She's now exec in school.

She had such a great influence in me.

From a purely technical perspective.

She was a really great underwriter, but also a great person understanding the full, like the holistic view of what's.

Some of the impacts in terms of underwriting decision on the downstream sort of systems, processes, people and so on.

So great people leader, but also a great technical expert.

So I really appreciated working with Claire the Other person was again my boss.

I reported directly into a person called Soumya Murthy.

She's now CRO within claim sorry Allianz services.

She was again another person who was really great in terms of managing people.

So how do you keep motivated a diverse set of individuals and who doesn't have clear deliverables like in a change and transformation environment.

It's so, you know, sort of like not specific.

So, so her approach to people management was really amazing.

I still keep in touch with her and, and she was a great leader.

So these are people I, I still think about when I come to certain key decisions.

How would they handle this and, and you know that keeps me going as well.

What, what about in the celebrity world?

Is there anyone that kind of that is that you particularly admire or is the, is your kind of idol type person?

I love, I like cricket as well so I like Virat Kohli if you know Indian cricket.

So he has been a great performer, great athlete for so many years, for the last 15, 20 years.

So I really you know, sort of value his approach to the game, his attitude, his you know, sort of building of the team and all those aspects.

So that's something I really, you know, sort of.

Yeah, look, look up to.

Yeah, I mean I'm quite a big cricket man as well.

Yeah, he's been a, he's been a bit of a thorn in England's side on many occasions.

Joe Root is a great, great player as well.

Really appreciate him.

India have got so many good crickets haven't they?

Like, but they're like gods over there as well.

I mean the pressure they have to deal with as well is kind of.

Absolutely.

But yeah, I mean I, I'm not sure there's, there's any sport that has that intense pressure in one country on is, is Indian cricket as I'm sure there'll be someone that disagrees with me but.

But yeah, England for England Football manager maybe right up there.

Okay, amazing.

Well look, we're coming to the end.

The last final question that I ask everyone is, is a simple one is what, what, what's the best thing about working in insurance?

To me it is the relevance like insurance is relevant in so many ways.

Not just about personal risk management but also in terms of making sure that the world takes on so global trade, everything relies on insurance so it's very relevant.

The second is also so many different smart individuals you can work with, you know, across the insurance industry.

So really enjoy working with those people.

So yeah, those are things which I love about insurance and also there's so much of transformation potential there.

So yeah, I look forward to that.

Yeah, I mean, I certainly don't think that you transformation guys are going to be short of stuff to do over the next kind of decade or so.

Well, look, that brings us to the end.

Look, thanks so much for the time, really appreciate it.

I mean, look, I'm sure people will want to connect with you and reach out off the back of this.

Are you okay if people kind of reach out to you?

And is LinkedIn probably the best place to do that?

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, look forward to that.

And I'm quite open to connecting with people and learning from their experiences as well.

Amazing.

Well, look, thanks again for having the time to come and see us.

We'll back with plenty more episodes over the rest of 2025.

So keep listening and reach out to me if you want to connect.

And the same with Samesh.

Thank you.

And that's it for today's episode of beyond the Desk.

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