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.

Giles, welcome to the podcast.

How you doing?

Morning, Mark.

Yeah, very well, thanks.

Good stuff.

Right.

So like, I always think like we'll go through the whole career and stuff like that, but, but like, I guess let's just.

And we'll probably go right back to the, to the start and kind of work our way through it kind of chronologically.

But before I do that, let's just do a bit of an intro if you'd like to just introduce yourself and what you're all about and company job, etc.

And we'll go from there.

Yeah, very good.

Giles Baxter, CIO for Europe for Brown and Brown.

So we're a large US based insurance broker and I run technology for our operations across Europe.

Good stuff.

How long have you been there?

A year now.

So I started at the beginning this year.

So just coming up to the end of my first year.

Cool.

How's it gone?

Busy?

Yeah, definitely busy.

It's been great.

Really enjoyed it.

It suits me really well and it's quite nice.

It's nice at this time of year to just reflect on the year that's gone by, look forward to the year ahead.

Yeah, we've come a long way.

We've got a lot of exciting stuff ahead of us.

So I like to say, I like to go all the way back to the start.

So like my, my first kind of question really is, is how did you.

What did it look like?

We were talking just before about your kids being at university and stuff like that.

What, what did that look like for you?

Were you always into tech right from, from a young age or was it kind of a gradual evolution?

Yeah, so I, I started chemistry was what I was into, into university, did a chemistry degree, ran up some debts at uni like everybody else does and went through the, through, through the milk round.

Yeah.

Applied to a whole load of different people and the, the one who could help me pay my debts off fastest, unashamedly, was Anderson Consulting at the time.

Okay.

So I took the job there.

They, they send your, your first six to 12 weeks of learning what you're doing.

Yeah.

Sat me in front of a computer and said, we're going to teach you to code.

Wasn't sure I was expecting that.

Yeah.

So a bit of an accident, to be honest, but I enjoyed it.

I got on all right with it and, and had a great, great time with Accenture.

So that's how I fell into it.

Were you, did they do anything through that process to kind of figure out whether or not that would be what you would be good at?

Because I get.

Were you.

Because I guess if you were into chemistry, you weren't.

You weren't overly kind of tech savvy before that or into any kind of specific kind of tech related stuff computer wise?

No, I mean, they took a really broad range.

So you start with 30 of you.

Right, okay.

And call that start group.

And we were from a broad range of subjects.

We had English students, history students, some, some very sharp mathematicians, a few scientists.

So we were kind of all over the spectrum.

Right.

So.

And it's great.

I mean, interestingly, we, we met up on our 30th year anniversary as a start group just earlier, a couple of months ago.

Yeah.

So still in contact with all those?

Still in contact with them.

You know, we all started together, we all went through our training together.

Amazing.

And it starts building that network.

But it's amazing to see what people have done as well.

So still, some still with Accenture as it is now.

Yeah.

Others out in industry, others doing completely different careers, but actually all quite successful in what they're doing.

So they seem to do quite well at picking out people who had energy, who were driven, I think was the main characteristic they were looking for.

Yeah, I mean, they certainly had.

In my line of work, you always used to think people that went into kind of extension, stuff like that in the early years, they used to kind of churn out really good people whether they stayed at Accenture or not.

So they've obviously got something, a kind of a method to bring in but that's interesting.

How did you, how did you find that?

How did you.

Obviously took to the, the tech world relatively quickly and stuck with it.

But was that, was that kind of easy to pick up for you or is it, is it something that you, you had to work at?

They were very structured in, in how they developed you.

Right.

Which was great.

I did best part, 10 years there.

Yeah.

I think I probably got about 20 years experience.

So they, they do work you very hard and long, but in a very structured way.

It was very up and out at the time.

Yeah.

But you get a load of exposure, so that was great.

So you go from coding to running coding teams to then going, well, do you want to go up a deeply technical path or do you want to go up a management path?

So that that's almost your first career choice for me was going, I want to be more managerial than technical.

And then you go from small teams to teams of teams to leading jobs, to managing the relationship with the customer.

Structured and a great and accelerated career path.

Did you, did you stay there for how long were you there for then doing that?

Because it sounds like you went up through the, the levels while you, while you were there.

About 10 years, actually.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, so a good, good old stint.

So I learned my craft in, in depth.

Yeah.

Which is, which is really helpful and I think that still comes through in, in some of the stuff I do today, particularly as you're doing more around the kind of exec table of how you present ideas, how you, how you think and structure your work.

And particularly as you're scaling, being able to scale, how you structure what you do, that's really important.

And that, that comes right back from those kind of early days of going through a structured environment, I think.

Yeah.

So talk, talk me through the.

So, so when you left there kind of 10 years in what, what kind of position and role were you doing then?

Have you evolved from the, the hands on code in stuff to doing something more senior kind of leadership stuff there, or was it further down the line that you kind of took on the more leadership type positions?

Yeah, I kind of got my pigeonhole.

What I became known for, if you like, was big difficult programs, typically under a little bit of duress.

So there were always kind of two or three programs going on within Accenture that were the big scale ones that were a little bit difficult and they're the ones I tended to get sent away to in the insurance sector.

So you kind of fall into a sector in the beginning.

My first customer, I got Sent to happened to be an insurance customer and then you fit within the insurance vertical and round you go.

But I ended up on the big scale program.

So whether that was Scott Ek legal in general Pearl Assurances, it was the big transformation programs and you just run bigger and bigger teams in solution delivery.

So software development typically.

So I'm more of a software than an infrastructure guy.

Yeah.

Typically I'd have kind of the, the architects reporting direct in, but then run squads and tribes of people across that.

Yeah.

So what, what was the, the kind of catalyst after 10 years for you to, to move on from there?

And what did that, what did that look like when you, when you did.

It was kind of the first wave of Internet, really.

Right.

So lots, lots of startups.

Yeah, lots, lots of my mates going, we've got to a certain point within this world, did I want to carry on just doing more and more scale away from home failing programs or did I want to give a, give an Internet startup a go and an opportunity came up.

So I thought now or never.

Good, good point.

In your career.

Yeah.

Right, so.

As well.

So hadn't fully settled down yet, had the ability to go and try something different.

So I thought, yes, it's the right time for me, I want to do that.

So I went and joined an Internet startup.

Okay, so what was that?

What was that company and what was the role?

So that was Actress.

All right.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it was the startup team at Actress.

Okay.

So they had funding, they had an idea, they had a design, they roughly knew the software they wanted to deliver and who with and then needed somebody to be their development director.

Right.

So I came in and ran the development of the Actress product delivery for the first two releases.

Yeah, okay.

Which was again pretty cool.

Yeah.

And again change as well.

Yeah, massive, massive, massive.

It was good.

I think there were about 20 of us when I joined.

Right.

Wow.

We had our software engineering offshore to South Africa.

Yeah.

And again, you'll see a bit of a theme emerge here.

But the Actress alumni for the startup team we met last month as well.

So we got our pre Christmas drinks in.

So that team that started it up, incredibly tight again, all doing different things, but successful in what they do.

Yeah, yeah.

But a very small, very focused, very driven team to get that software out.

Great times, actually.

Is that, is that, is that just because of the bond you think you, you build in like a kind of a startup type environment like you like?

I mean I listen to quite a lot of podcasts as well and you hear about the.

I Was recently listening to the.

The Story of Netflix actually like the book and the bond those people got from kind of put in late nights and all that kind of stuff is something, it's kind of almost akin to kind of when you go to university with people and stuff like that.

Is it, was it, is it that kind of thing?

And is, is that, is that really what you wanted, having come out from a, a big firm like Accenture?

That must have been a real kind of culture shock going from like a, a huge business like that to something that's a lot more, A lot more kind of smaller startup, a lot less structured.

Yeah, it is very different.

Yeah, very different.

But you are a highly capable team.

You do pull some incredibly long hours together and you're all in it and fully into it together.

I remember performance testing.

So the way we performance test the first release of the software is we'd get the whole organization in 8:00 in the evening.

We'd all hit the quote button at the same time and watch the application fall over on the floor.

But you know, you've got the whole office in there's all of you there.

You're all tight.

You all know exactly what's going on.

We did a lot of traveling to South Africa together because that's where the software was built.

So you're spending a lot of your downtime with people as well.

So you build a real trust, respect, tight bonds with people.

Yeah, and they persist as well.

South Africa, for a couple of, couple of trips there was.

Yeah, it was Joburg, not Cape Town.

So you had to be a little bit careful.

But, but again, we have the story about eating kilo steaks when we were out there, because that was like your rite of passage to join the team.

And typically when we meet up, we'll go out to steakhouse and you know, the old stories will come out and you, you've just got those shared stories together that are really powerful and bond you together.

So how long did you do that for?

I think that was three years.

Okay, so a year and a half to get the first release out and then get the second and the third release out.

Yeah.

So that was then all about just scaling the, the application.

Okay.

And so what, what was the, the kind of jump, I guess, jumping forward when, when did it evolve then into being a, a kind of a CIO leadership?

Is that, was that at that point were you kind of thinking that was what you always wanted to do and then, and, and did that kind of just.

Or did that just organically Happen.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, did you always have your eyes set on kind of the overall leadership role in tech?

Yeah, I think I did actually.

So that, that formed up kind of post actress time is going well.

I do enjoy tech and I enjoy the leadership side of it so.

Well, what's, what's the role where you have all of the leadership and you're making the final decision on the tech and.

Well, that's the CIO role.

So I thought I'd like to give that a go at some stage.

So I did a bit of research around.

There was a paper the DNA of a CIO and what are the different skills you need to have to do it?

And it just gently helps guide your career to go well.

There needs to be a bit of strategy, there needs to be a bit of running service, you need to be commercial, you need to have great engagement with the business.

Your communication stuff.

You know there were 10 things and as you go through your career going well how, how are you working each of those muscles And I think it's all right to be a bit spiky as well.

I think by the time you get to everyone's a little bit spiky.

Right.

But as long as you're aware of it and you hire a team around you that help fill in your spikes.

But anyway, so, so that, that helped shape kind of what I needed to get there and then my career choices from there gently taken me in that direction.

So what was the.

What where did you get, which role did you land the first CIO role sounds at rsa.

Yeah.

Okay.

So from actress I went to a small consultancy called Project One.

Project One put me in a, in an rsa.

They used to do this.

I used to actually do some work with them years ago.

They used to do kind of the, the way they paid people was quite unique, wasn't it?

They used to pay based on kind of how they had.

They did how many your utilization in this country.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

And I think at again I probably hadn't done my due diligence quite enough to understand that wasn't, wasn't a great model for me at the time of my life I was in.

Right.

I used to hire lots of people from Accenture and stuff like Big four consulting people.

But they were great.

Again sending out typically fix on fail projects.

One or two people very.

You're on your own, you're in it, you're accountable.

So you, you grow up pretty fast.

Yeah, yeah.

And you learn to be self sufficient.

And again, you're, you're doing, you're in, in front of customers.

So that was great.

I'd imagine that had been quite a good fit for you as well, because from what I can remember they, they did used to do the, the kind of big challenging programs that were sometimes not going particularly well or stuff like that.

So that would have fit with your mold that what you, what you kind with.

With Accenture and stuff like that, I guess.

Yeah, did.

So that, that training that you've had through Accenture helps.

That kind of startup mentality helps.

Yeah.

But then you're really on your own.

Right, right.

You're in, in ones and twos, running programs in, in a client.

Yeah.

And, and the program I ran was.

One of the programs I ran was for rsa.

I.

Okay.

I really enjoyed them as a business.

I was working directly for the, for the group CIO at the time.

Yeah, they seem to like what I was doing.

And, and so I, I joined them.

Yeah.

Okay.

And, and did you join as a CIO straight away or was it, was it a different role and then an evolution?

Because I think that's a, I mean, we can talk about this again a little bit.

Again, a bit more detail because you've obviously had multiple CIO roles, but getting that first CIO gig is obviously, once you've got the CIO role, getting the second one third and the fourth one is.

Becomes easier every time.

But in theory.

But I think most people struggle to get that first one.

So what did that look like for you?

Yeah, so I joined Iran's IT strategy and architecture for the group.

Okay.

Which was great.

So I got massive exposure right around the group.

Right from the start, the group reorganized.

It reorganized into UK international and emerging markets.

And on the day it reorganized, the kind of the new CEO for emerging markets store was open up.

Popped my head around the door and said to him, hi, Paul, congratulations on your new role, big job, good luck in emerging markets.

And he went, thank you very much.

Who the hell are you and what do you do?

So he sat down, had about 15 minute chat, said, look, I run strategy and architecture.

Give me a call if you ever need a hand.

I'll see what I can do for you.

10 minutes later my phone goes, I need to get a message out to everybody across emerging markets to say who I am, what the agenda is and start getting those communication channels flowing.

It's like, right, that's, that's going to be interesting.

I need it today.

So, so we got that working.

Yeah.

For him.

And then the phone kept ringing more and more.

Okay.

Right.

And so I ended up going out and doing.

Just starting to look at the technology around emerging markets.

After about six months of doing that, and that ended up being all I was doing, I went, do you know what?

This is silly.

I have been searching for a.

For a CIO role.

You're kind of doing it anyway.

Yeah.

Do you want the title?

Amazing.

And.

And that's how I got my first CIO role.

So I.

And I was kind of early to mid-30s at the time.

Yeah.

So quite young for doing that.

Quite young.

Quite bigger job than I realized at the time.

Yeah.

Didn't know what I was doing.

So if I look back on it, they took a real risk on me.

Yeah.

But.

Which was great.

And RSA was very, very good about that.

Again, developing talent, taking a risk, wrapping the right support network around it.

And he was a great mentor and leader.

He didn't know much.

He wasn't a deep technologist, but he knew when I didn't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So if I paused when I was talking to you about stuff, you go, you.

You don't know the answer, Giles, do you?

Go away, be sure.

Yeah.

And then come back.

So he managed me very well at a personal level around whether I was confident in what I was doing in tech.

So they were.

And then the Matrix Report was to the group cio, who gives you kind of that.

That technology slant on it.

So very big matrix organization.

And that.

That worked well for me.

Yeah.

I mean, that's.

There's a.

There's a real lesson in there, isn't there?

Like, kind of.

But basically be.

Be inquisitive, be helpful, kind of be friendly.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, that all stemmed from you kind of go putting your head around the door and just kind of putting yourself out there basically to try and help someone.

And it's kind of evolved into you.

You getting a.

Probably the catalyst to the last kind of 10 years of your.

Or the next 10, 15, 20 years of your career, I guess.

Yeah.

I mean, it seems I've.

I think about that moment quite a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a really good one.

You know, as I on it, knowing what I know now, would.

Would I have made that move?

I'd known quite what he was like and how big the job was and all the rest of it.

And so that for me was a real turning point of just, you know, take taking a risk by putting your head around the door when you could have just walked past having a little Conversation following it up.

And it's almost startup mentality.

We talked a lot.

But you go back to the actress days about start, think big, start small, scale fast.

Yeah.

Think big.

You've got this big role in mind.

Start small.

It's those little conversations.

Yeah.

And.

And then out of that, jump on the opportunities and scale yourself fast.

Yeah.

So what did that evolution from then.

So obviously we'll, we'll touch a bit more on.

On some of the.

The cio.

Rod and I definitely want to get into the kind of the changing of industry and stuff, but you're at RSA for quite a while.

Then went to Gallagher's for, for a bit.

What was that?

Yeah.

And.

And it looks like from.

Certainly from what I've seen of your profile is that you.

You kind of evolved into bigger CIO roles as that went on.

So kind of divisional CIO to more kind of what broader remits to group CIO was that just.

Did that just kind of all get like.

I guess you, you liked the CIO role even though it was a challenge and you.

And you.

And you kind of wanted to take on more responsibility.

You kind of found your feet in that role after.

After doing that.

Yeah.

So I think not, not super planned in terms of the.

Definitely directionally.

For me, every move I've made has needed to directionally make sense.

So if you do the.

The RSA thing, it went from strategy and architecture for the group to CIO for emerging markets.

I then went out with coo.

Yeah.

For Asia, Middle east.

Lived in Dubai for a year and a half, which was quite fun.

Yeah.

Then came back to the UK and that was the scale job running tech and change for the uk.

Yeah.

And broadly, those are kind of two to three year gigs each.

Yep.

So it's.

It's building the team, is setting the strategy, building the team and getting the delivery runs on the board.

But then when it moves into it's operating, it's running its steady state, it's a bit less me.

Yeah.

So I.

And I guess some of that kind of again plays back to the startup thing.

I enjoy the change, I enjoy that.

That energy at the beginning and putting energy into the machine and growing a team and setting the strategy.

So by the time I did four years as UK cio, we'd set the strategy, we had it up and running.

It was time for something new for me and that was the move to Gallagher.

So that was out of a carrier and into a broker again.

We'll talk about kind of.

We've talked already.

A little bit about kind of your network.

But again, how did that role come about through my network.

So I got a call from people who are in doing work with Gallagher.

The group CIO with Gallagher was ex Accenture.

We had a conversation.

It clicked really quickly.

They just gone on the buy.

Lots of brokers in the uk.

So the UK had been their heavy investment and it was, how do we bring all of that together?

How do we rebrand it as Gallagher?

How do we bring everybody onto platform and start to build proper presence in Europe?

So that was the role there.

Again, high degree of change.

I like that strong network made sense because it was still leveraging the insurance connections.

And guess what?

I've been a customer of actress at rsa.

I was a customer again, Gallagher.

So never wind people up on the way out because you never know who you're going to come up against again.

And it becomes increasingly small in the insurance.

Insurance world, doesn't it?

Yeah.

So.

So the moves.

The moves make sense.

Yeah.

So you mean.

I think the.

So again, jumping on a little bit from that.

Like.

I mean, there's.

Because I definitely want to go back to that and understand the differences.

But what.

What did you find in the.

In the differences from going from a carrier to a broker?

Was it was there.

I know that.

I mean, in my mind they wouldn't necessarily be that mistake.

But was it.

Was the differences in the industry space or was it more the type of role and the stuff that you were doing, or were they similar roles?

Fairly similar.

The businesses are very different.

So for a carrier, it's scale, it's running on thin margins, you're carrying the risk.

So you need to be a lot more sophisticated about how you're managing the risk.

For broking, it's more of a commission business.

So just the economics works slightly differently.

Brokers are.

With Gallagher and with Brown and Brown, you're doing.

You're acting a bit like a carrier as well in an MGA business.

So there's a lot of similarity there.

But we do more.

We're more commercial bent, we're more specialist bent as opposed to rsa at the time, did a lot of personal lines, which is volume, it's heavy analytics, it's fraud detection.

So it's at scale.

The.

The budgets were bigger.

Yeah.

The infrastructure was bigger, the scale was bigger.

Whereas what we found in the brokers and particularly the consolidators, which is where we are, you've got a lot of fragmented technology that you're bringing together.

So it's a big consolidation Play or integration.

Simplification play.

And actually there's a really big cultural impact there as well because you're constantly acquiring businesses and you're bringing them in culturally as well as technically.

Yeah.

So by the time your technology journey's underway, that's okay.

It's.

Can you win hearts and minds to get people to want to come onto your platform, to want to use the services you build, to trust that you can deliver a service for them that they can get from that.

The guy who sat in their small business for years and years.

So they're just different cultural challenges, I think was probably the main thing.

Yeah.

Okay.

I want to jump forward to the more recent past because I think probably when we got to know each other, you had just moved to rm, which is obviously totally out of there and we've spoke about it before, but I'd really like to get into the mindset of that.

So tell us a little bit about what that, that, that looked like, why you did that, made that move, what the, what the role was and.

Etc.

Yeah.

So I, after, after Gallagher, I did.

Did a bit of time kind of wandering around here.

Sure.

We're in Shoreditch.

Right.

Wandering around Shoreditch looking at all the startups and, and educated me on that a bit.

I was doing a little bit of fractional work and what I, what I really wanted to do was not do something in insurance.

Right.

Okay.

Why is that?

So I, I just wanted to prove to myself that I wasn't just an insurance cio.

Right.

Because I do think the skills are transferable with the right mindset and I wanted to prove that to myself.

So I wanted to do something different.

I wanted to do something with a bit more of a socially worthy badge on it, if you like to give back a little bit more.

And I did a small piece of work for RM again, almost back to the kind of project 1 days ago and they had a project wasn't working very well.

I did some work for them pro bono because I was in a giving back phase and that was important to me.

What do RM do?

Like what's their business?

So they were born out of research machines.

They play into education.

They're an ed tech and at the time they did three things.

So they run technology for schools for 3,000 schools across the UK.

The easiest way to describe it, a mini Amazon to school.

So they provide.

The story was if you turned a school upside down and shook it, everything that falls out except the teachers we could provide you.

And the third thing they did was Mark GCSEs and a level papers.

So half the A levels in the UK were marked on RM software.

So we'd collect all the papers in, scan them, distribute them out and manage that whole marking of papers.

So I did a piece of work for them again.

They liked what they saw.

This.

Well, we're kind of looking for a group cio.

Would you do it for a while?

I said, I'll do it for two years for you.

Yeah, yeah.

Loved it.

Really enjoyed what we did there.

The first question from my kids was, oh, dad, you mark all the A levels, do you?

Does that mean no?

Absolutely.

There's an angle.

But it was great.

I went out, I visited all the schools that we.

We supported in.

In our.

In my local community, so got quite connected in with the community.

Nice.

A whole load of safeguarding going in for children, which was great to see, but really nice for.

For me to be involved back in the education process.

Yeah.

The big move there was again moving a lot of the infrastructure into cloud.

Right.

What that ended up doing for schools was take a whole load of their infrastructure out of the school.

That allowed them just freed up more space within the school and they get a much better service by having this stuff done at scale than they could if they were doing it themselves.

So the model really did feel Win.

Win.

Yeah.

And I.

I was there when Covid hit.

Oh, right.

So I was actually due to leave when Covid hit and.

And it hit just as I was about to leave to go to.

To Brown and Brown.

I said to open gi.

I'm.

I'm actually going to need to.

To stay a bit because I need to get these schools and support getting these schools up and running when they're teaching from home overnight.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it actually went surprisingly smoothly because we'd been on that cloud journey.

The infrastructure was out of the schools already.

All we had to.

That the kids had the devices, of course, at home rather than in the classroom to be able to access all of the remote learning.

Yeah.

Had that been a few years earlier, that would.

I guess that would have been a shocker.

Would have been a shocker.

And a lot of schools did find it difficult, but for us, we could get those schools up and running overnight as long as the kids had their devices.

And that was almost the part I played in Covid.

I felt great about that and it was really nice to be part of it, but again, it was a bit.

We had a couple of weeks that felt a bit startupy, like where everyone was in the whole time just Making sure it all went smoothly.

But again, a bonding experience, a great experience.

I've.

I've got some friends and some people I stay in touch with out of that great experience.

What, what were the.

What did you find?

Is that you mean.

I'm sure there's a whole heap of differences, but like going back to what you said about the transferable skills, did you find that it was transferable like, or was there?

They're kind of a steep learning curve for you.

How was the change?

Because I think lots of people in your position there would probably stay doing insurance CIO or at least financial services CIO roles for the entirety of the rest of their career.

And they probably wouldn't challenge themselves to go and do something different certainly once they've landed that cio, maybe early in their career.

So what was that like?

So you think there are a whole bunch of things that are transferable.

How you structure your thinking, how you structure your team, how you manage the commerciality of your function.

All of that still works.

There are some real differences in kind of the products and the technologies that we deploy.

So you need to get into that.

I'll give you an example in a second.

And the next one is.

And your customer base is radically different.

Yeah, of course.

So you have to get out in front of your customers.

So for me it was really important.

I went out, I spent time in the schools, I spent time in my kids schools who we have to provide services into.

That was eye opening, seeing it from the other side.

But you've got to be curious about that stuff.

So you've got to be curious about your customers.

It's vitally important.

You've got to be able to build trust with them.

Again, working that muscle or wanting to do that, you need to do that wherever you go.

It just happens to be you're learning a different set of customer priorities and what's important to them.

So that sounds.

Well, the other bit was the technologies were very different.

So I know we all talk about AI at the moment, but if you go back to the time at rm, we were doing some pretty cool stuff with machine learning.

So we'd got to the point in our marking business where we could mark handwritten A level English papers more consistently and accurately through machines than we could through human markers.

Right.

Okay.

Now the world culturally wasn't quite ready to let their kids papers be marked by a computer, but you could massively accelerate what we were doing and apply some, some quality control across the top through that kind of tooling.

So again, a Very different set of products we were using to create that within a, within an education environment.

But the architectural skills of plugging stuff together, assessing the right products to fit are all very transferable.

Yeah.

So I think the skills are transferable but you have to be curious about the environment you're deploying them in.

I think that word you use there a couple of times about being curious, I think that's quite common in lots of people I've interviewed on podcasts about just the way that you should be really and handling those kind of situations.

But it's interesting that you so, so like I don't think most people would necessarily when, when they think of innovation and stuff like that would necessarily think of education as where, where that there would be lots of technology innovation.

But when you actually talk about that kind of there's, there's a whole heap of stuff that can be done there to, to modernize, isn't there?

Like in, in comparison to.

So it's.

So yeah, I mean it's.

I bet it was quite an interesting journey.

But what, what was the, what was the catalyst then for you wanting to, to kind of of come back semi into insurance?

Because I know you went, you left there and then came into a software provider.

So it's probably similar to the actuary stuff, although maybe a bigger bit bigger business this time.

Yeah, I said I'd do two years.

So I did my two years and said it's important you find somebody who's going to take.

So I've kind of moved you up a gear.

I've done it's time for you to find somebody else.

And I had a phone call from Open gi.

So again similar space to what I kind of known for software product company playing into insurance brokers private equity backed this time.

So I'd always wanted to do a PE gig that kind of ticked a box for me and moved there in Covid completely remote in terms of the whole onboarding interviewing process.

Six months before I even met anyone physically from Open gi.

But again a very interesting point in their journey where we had a bunch of heritage product sets worked very well, brokers loved them but then wanted to build next generation product and build it properly cloud native and the guys there had secured the funding and support of the P parent to do that and they just said well if you're going to do it and we're going to give you the money to do it, you, you need somebody who's going to give you a good chance of doing it.

And so they, they looked around, they Couldn't find anyone so they phoned me up.

So, but, so yeah, so it was great.

I had again a lot of interviews with the PE House as well as the leadership team at Open GI and then we ended up bringing ThoughtWorks in to help us do that.

So again, selecting Top Draw partners to help us not only build the software but to rebuild our, our engineering capability in a very pure agile way.

So we had cloud native microservice API enabled built with very pure cloud.

We used the Spotify model.

Yeah.

Engineering and it worked really well.

So that opportunity to do something transformational for them and build modern software for an industry that's not typically known for modern software.

Yeah, that, that was a real cool opportunity for me.

So that, that was a no brainer.

Yeah.

I mean and then, and then the final one to take you to where you are now.

I'm, I'm guessing that that Brown and Brown wanted to do something fairly big and challenging otherwise it probably wouldn't have got you excited.

But what, what made you, what made you move back into the, the kind of core insurance world.

So again for Brown and Brown, they've, they've been on an acquisition trail across Europe.

Yep.

They're a high growth broker, very high quality business.

Right.

Had always looked at them and thought they're interesting.

I wonder how they do that.

And they had, they've been on an acquisition spree across Europe growing incredibly fast.

I mean I think if you go back to 2010 they'd have been, you know, 10 million in the UK.

If you go forwards to where we are now, 50 times that and on a massive, massive growth curve.

So we did 4 billion as an organization at the end of 2023 and have publicly stated we want to double and we'll double by bulking up in Europe so that we've bought a bunch of stuff already and we've not rebranded it as Brown and Brown and brought it onto platform.

That's kind of step one.

But then step two is very much continue that growth and acquisition trail.

And you've seen that we announced.

When was it?

1st of November I think it was that we've acquired a 700 person brokerage out in the Netherlands called Quintus.

Again, a very high quality business.

We're starting to have scale in Europe, not just the uk and that's a super exciting journey to be on.

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Now let's get back to today's episode.

What's the what's the kind of the the big kind of challenge for you now then?

Like what what made you apart from obviously the business side of things, what's the kind of big technology challenge for you over the next few years?

So I think that the first challenge is bring those businesses together and bring them onto platform common security layer, common infrastructure layer in the cloud.

So this year we brought two and a half thousand people onto our cloud platform, two and a half thousand teammates onto our cloud platform.

So that's a scale provision of infrastructure.

And then what we're looking for is around our three main business units.

So retail, mga, wholesale, what's our application strategy around each of those around simplifying the application strategy.

So you buy every business, it comes with a policy admin system, you end up with tons of them.

How do we consolidate that?

So we've got simplification journeys running across all three of those businesses.

Then as you roll forward we're talking about how do we change the mix of where we're investing our change money.

So the mix we talk about is run change innovate.

So we go back to that innovation point we talked about earlier.

If you talk about we talk about kind of bringing people onto platform, whether it's our security platform, our infrastructure platform, our core admin system platform that that for us is a kind of a part of a run investment.

So as we go forward into next year, how are we shifting our mix into change and transform and that's much more around the data platforms that we're building and much more around the Customer journeys and portals that we're building.

And then you go beyond that and start looking at sales leadership and CRM.

So.

So shifting the mix, that's the important bit for us.

And being able to free up money out of the kind of running of the business into changing and innovating for the business.

Interesting.

So I guess I wanted to.

One of the things that I was interested about.

You've obviously had lots of different CIO roles over a decent chunk of time.

You mentioned about that, the DNA of a cio.

Do you think that's.

What do you think the DNA of a good CIO is now in comparison to what.

What it used to be?

Do you think it's changed?

That's a good question.

Yes, I think it has.

So I think a CIO position now is.

It's a lot more core on the exec leadership team than it would have been at the beginning.

Right, okay.

All right.

So for me, if you go back to the beginning, it was more about just.

Just make sure when we turn the taps on, the water comes out.

Yeah, yeah, right.

One of the things I love about Brown and Brown is we talk about.

We got five pillars as to how we're going to achieve that strategy of doubling our business.

Right.

Organic growth, inorganic growth, customer people and our teammates and our talent, and then using technology with purpose.

Right, right.

So I think technology's very much become.

It's a key pillar in how every business is a tech business now.

Yeah, yeah, right.

And the CIO has a proper seat at the table, and that's the type of business I look for, that recognizes that where you are the business, you're part of the business, you're driving it, you're commercial.

I just happen to run the technology function.

Yeah, yeah.

So actually, my view of a CIO is increasingly business savvy, increasingly being asked to help drive the business forward.

Less about, just make sure that the data flows and the water comes out the taps when you turn them on.

And I think that changes how you need to be and present as a person.

You need to be part of that business and energized and trusted and respected.

And so that's important.

So I think more of the softer skills you need to come through the technology skills and into the softer people skills.

Yeah, I thought that was what you're going to say.

I mean, it's an interesting one because one of the things that.

I mean, look, lots of people that listen to the podcast will be people that are aspiring to be a cio, Right.

They might be in that kind of architecture role.

Like you before, do you think it's now even more important that people understand how the business works and they want.

And I guess they're just focusing a bit more on how technology can drive growth and stuff like that, rather than, like you said, keeping the lights on and just keeping things working.

Is that kind of critically important now, do you think?

Yeah, I think it's vital.

So I'm through my first year and a big part is the change in kind of mindset within the whole team in technology is trying to understand how everything you do every day is linked through those golden threads into the organizational goals and how it's creating value for the organization.

So understand the work you're doing and understand how that work creates value.

And if the work's not creating value, value, why are you doing it anyway?

So that constantly questioning how am I creating value through technology is really important.

It's not about creating architecturally pure ivory tower solutions, it's about how are you producing solutions the business want to use that creates value for the end customer.

How are you developing yourself and bringing all of yourself to work and enjoying your work?

Because if you're enjoying your work, you'll want to do it.

You understand how it creates value.

You're progressing, you're enjoying where you're working.

All of that stuff is vital.

Yeah, I guess that kind of segues quite nicely onto like I, I'm always really interested in, in what the, the kind of 2, 3, 4 key snippets of advice you would give to someone.

So if you, if you were to kind of look at your, your previous self or someone that was, was aspiring to get their first CIO gig?

What's the, what are the kind of few bits of advice you've picked up over the years that you would give to someone wanting to take on that role?

So I think we've taught be curious a lot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that's really important.

Be curious.

Understand the business.

Understand how the business makes money, delivers for customers.

So understand your customers, understand your business.

Be curious, engage.

I think the bit for me that's worked quite well is the ability to translate the technology into business speak and translate the business goals down into the technology team.

Yeah.

So you've got to be able to act well on that interface and translate.

That's important.

I think we talked about that turning point around.

Me just popping my head around the door and taking that risk.

So do take risks.

What's the worst that can happen?

So take risks.

If I go back to the early days of my career, I used to think it was all about delivering the results.

And it wasn't so much about the how you delivered them, but your results would speak for themselves, Right?

Yes.

You've got to deliver the results, but the how is really important as well.

Okay, so it's not just the what, it's the how you do it.

When you say how, like give some more context on that simple thing.

Do you smile when you come into work?

Right.

A silly thing.

Right.

Do the business seek you out and ask you for your advice or do they go, I don't want to talk to Giles.

Whenever I come away, I'm more confused than when I left.

If I talk to Giles, does stuff get done?

Does he care about it?

Does he understand my business?

So that being not only respected for that you can do stuff and you know your subject matter, but trusted at a personal level as well, goes a little bit back to the great teams you worked for and the fellowship you created.

But trust and respect.

So be, be, be respected and trusted.

Enjoy going out for a beer or, or a glass of wine or whatever with the relax and enjoy the company of the people you work with.

When you've cracked that and you've.

And you take a few risks and you're curious and you're delivering great results when you've cracked it, haven't you?

Yeah, I mean, I think that relationship things often underestimated, isn't it like that?

The relationships with the people that you're actually working with and delivering to more senior team, et cetera.

Is that the people part?

It's really key, isn't it?

I think if you don't get that right, then I think you're always going to struggle.

At least if, then if you make mistakes, you've got people on side.

Yeah.

And we can have a rep, can't we?

As technologists.

Always a bit of a black art, dark art.

Don't come here, don't worry about it, we'll fix it all for you.

But I think making it transparent and understandable is really important.

Important, yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Because the guys, they, they invest heavily in their technology.

It's really important.

They do like to understand where the money's going and how it's creating value and feel like they've come away from a conversation, lifted up rather than, oh, don't I feel even more in the dark than when I started.

Yeah, that's really important.

What about you?

And maybe it kind of sits under the kind of be curious kind of banner, but what about the variety, because I think that's, that's one thing that, that really is noticeable about your, your career is that you, I appreciate lots of them are in and around insurance, but, but you've, you've taken risks in, in the roles that you've gone to as well to, to kind of stretch your, your knowledge and your experience and stuff like that.

You mean, do you think that's really important and, and do you think that variety in the part in your past career has, has been a, has been a benefit to what you've, you've ended up.

Up doing now?

Yeah.

So it's important for me.

Yeah, you're right.

I've always.

There's a theme, there's a story you can tell from the, the journey of the direction it's going in, but it's not in straight lines.

I think we talked about that earlier on.

I'm just, I'm not laser focused on what the next job is and what the next job is, but there's a theme in it and I, I work better when I'm, when I'm learning, when I'm approaching tough challenges, when I'm doing new stuff, I perform better.

Yeah.

So that works for me.

It keeps me engaged, energized, active.

It's, it's also great for the team.

Yeah.

Because you're pushing the boundaries, you're doing new work.

We, we don't tend to use bleeding edge technologies, but we'll use modern technologies.

Yeah.

So we're doing, we're doing a lot around data mesh at the moment, for example.

And that's, that's great for our data guys.

Yeah.

Like they're learning new skills all the time.

They're becoming more employable.

Yeah.

People will approach them and go, doing good stuff over there.

Can you go?

Nope.

Why do we want to move?

We've got a great environment here.

We're doing great stuff.

So I think it's been important for me to do different stuff.

It keeps me active, it gets my, gets me to bring my best me to work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the interesting debate I have at Brown and Brown, which is great, we can have this debate that open is I've said you need to keep me active and challenged and engaged and as long as you can do that, that I'll stay and love working here.

Yeah.

So we've got a really healthy relationship around that as well, which is great.

What's your view on the in insurance experience as well?

Because that's the, that's the kind of thing that is, is a Fairly common theme, isn't it?

Like, I mean that trying to get different skills, different ways of thinking, different levels of experience and from different industries that are maybe doing things more innovatively or using different types of technology or etc.

But, but the, the insurance industry does, does generally have a reputation for, for hiring within and keeping within the ecosystem.

What, what are your thoughts around that?

I think there are, there, there are some roles where that helps.

Yeah, it definitely helps me a bit that I can talk to the business in insurance terms because I've been around it for a while and I know, I know a bunch of the characters in it that, that just helps build confidence.

But I'll give you an example.

When I, when I turned up, we had a big program we were running in the first month that was leaderless.

I went out through my network and I pulled in a program manager who I'd worked with rm, never worked in insurance before.

Brilliant program manager.

Put through the interviews and he met a bunch of the business guys and went, yeah, but he doesn't know insurance.

Yeah, but you know insurance, you don't need an insurance guy.

You need somebody who's really hot at running a program at scale and bringing confidence into the program.

Delivery took about six weeks and they came back absolutely the right decision.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, so I think you get the right skills for the role.

We can teach you insurance, right.

What are the outcomes we want, how we create?

So what's the work that needs to be done?

What are the outcomes we want?

How is it creating business value for the business?

And then what are the skill sets we need?

It's rarely insurance skill sets.

Now if I've got a business CIO in my retail business or my MGA business.

Yeah, it helps if they understand that business.

They'll come up to speed a lot faster.

But it usually goes on the advantageous rather than essential skill sets.

If we're building out data solutions and we talked about doing a load in data mesh at the moment, they're quite hard skills to come by.

But I'd like somebody who's got really deep, deep data skills.

I'd like somebody who's got really deep, agile delivery skills.

Yeah, we can teach them the insurance stuff.

Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting one.

I, I think, I mean, I, I, if anyone follows me on LinkedIn, I harp on about it quite, quite regularly.

But, but yeah, you mean, I, I think, I think sometimes people.

Lazy is probably the wrong word, but it's maybe the easier option.

It's the kind of root of least resistance, isn't it, to hire someone because actually they can get up to speed more quickly.

But, but, but there's a whole world of great skills that are out there that like you say, if you're intelligent and switched on, I think you'd probably pick insurance up pretty quickly.

Especially in some of those more technical roles where maybe insurance is kind of 10% of the job, maybe.

Have you seen throughout your time working insurance you've had multiple different roles now is there really a willingness to take more risks on people from outside the industry now?

Do you think that's changing?

I don't know.

Unfortunately, people have always been willing to say, Charles, just hire the right team.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Get the right skills and actually bringing some different thinking in helps.

And the guy runs data for us at the moment we bought in, he's done some work for the UN on how.

How do you get food to aid stations in an optimal way.

Right.

Pretty cool stuff.

Yeah.

Not terribly relevant to insurance, but it's a way of thinking and how do you get your models working and, and bringing that kind of skill in?

And he's landed well.

Yeah.

Right.

So again, I think as long as you've got people who can interact well with the business.

Yeah, I have that conversation up front with the business that goes well.

These are the skills I expect you to bring.

This is the outcomes you're expecting me to deliver will get you the right person.

I think we're all, I'm certainly all up for bringing external skills in.

We talked about being spiky earlier on in a leadership style.

So how am I very cognizant of where I'm spiky and I don't need everybody to have the same spike because otherwise we end up as a very one dimensional leadership team.

So how comms might not be my strongest point.

So I've got a couple of people in the leadership team who are very, very good on the comms side and they kind of balance that.

So.

So how as a leadership team are we balancing all those different skills out?

Yeah.

Similarly, I almost don't want a team that's full of insurance experts.

I want a broad basket of skills who help us go faster.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

I wanted to transition that over to a little bit about I don't want to focus too much on the things that you've messed up, but the.

I'm always interested in like lessons learned.

So like you've obviously had.

We spoke a lot about the risks you've taken.

Generally it sounds like they've Turned out all right.

But were there, were there any.

There any things along the kind of big lessons that you've learned and any examples you've got of kind of things that went wrong and the lessons you took from it?

Because I think there's often you learn just as much from things going wrong.

Is it probably more than you do the things that go right?

Yeah.

Well, maybe let me do two on.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Great.

So one is as I look back on the year.

Yeah.

I do it every year.

I wish I'd gone a bit faster in certain areas.

Yeah.

Right.

So you always wish you'd done more.

And it's the decisions you don't take when you're.

You're antennae or your guts telling you you need to make a decision.

And it's usually a people thing.

So have I, have I given someone enough time?

Have I given them enough coaching?

Have I worked out that role's not working for them and so they need another role inside or outside the business.

Yeah.

And that's okay.

A conversation to have.

So it's those tough conversations that you know you should be having that you.

Kind of put off kind of over analysis of that.

Of that thing.

Yeah.

Don't put them off.

Yeah.

So always listen to your, to your gut.

Yeah.

There's a bit about then validating that and having a good network of people you trust and respect that you can debate some of this stuff with.

Yeah.

That's, that's really important to check you've got it right.

And to hold myself in check, that's important.

I think the other one, the group CIO chap called Gray Nestor, I spend a lot of time with him.

He's great.

When I came in, he said to me, giles, worry about your time and where you spend your time.

And we've broken it down four buckets.

So.

So time with your team, time with the European exec and leadership and business.

The third one is time with the US team and the fourth one is doing work to spend some time doing some work.

That would be nice.

So keep checking in on the balance between that and what I generally find is when things don't go well, I've got that balance wrong.

Right.

So I've neglected to spend time with my team because I've over indexed on spending time out in the business.

Okay.

Or I'm spending my 25 of work I'm doing in the evenings when I get home and then I'm neglecting my family.

Yeah.

And my, my mental and physical well being.

Yeah.

So I think understanding where you spend your time getting that right and also looking after yourself and your family and that whole support network that keeps you healthy so you can bring yourself best self to work.

Of course that, that's important.

So if you, if you take that back to the.

Where have I got things wrong?

It's where I've got out of balance and where I spend my time.

So do you do.

How do you make sure you keep that kind of all.

All imbalance?

Is it.

Is it kind of regular, kind of take yourself out, check in kind of mindset, kind of reevaluation of where you're at?

Do you tend to kind of do that regularly?

Yeah, so I do.

I do tend to check in at the end of the week with myself and I'm fortunate.

I live in central London.

I can walk to work.

Yeah.

Incredibly lucky.

I don't lose time on the train or commuting.

So it's half an hour and it's half an hour back and I use that as think time.

Yeah.

Just to check in on myself and go, how am I feeling?

How often do I get to the gym or go for a run this week?

Yeah.

And it's okay to go a week or two, but then.

Are you pulling it back on week three?

Yeah.

Am I spending enough time with the kids?

Enough time with Sabine, my partner.

Yeah.

And she's great and she keeps me balanced and she pulls me up on it as well.

So again, I have a good network.

Just a great support at home.

My kids tell me off if I'm not home enough.

Yeah.

They tell me when I'm home too much as well sometimes.

So that's great.

That really healthy relationship and work and my.

The CIO Gray, my CEO chap called Mike Bruce again is brilliant.

They keep me in check and we keep checking in on that stuff and it's just a super open, healthy relationship.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

That's.

I don't think people talk about that quite enough, do they?

It's just keep it, keeping it balanced, keep making sure you've got a nice structure and stuff like that I think becomes more important that interesting about the.

The walking and thinking time.

I think that's people.

I'd love to think I use that for my commute, but it's normally kind of just trying to find a seat or something like that.

But have you always done that?

Do you think you've always managed to keep that, that level there?

Was that something you've kind of you've grown into?

Yeah, I mean I did a lot of sport as A kid.

Yeah.

So that kind of sticks with you.

I've definitely noticed that.

I mean, what we do is attritional.

It's hard work.

Yeah.

And you do work some long hours and if you're not feeling healthy, you can't bring your best self to work.

I do notice it if I haven't.

If I haven't been down the gym or haven't been for a run.

And so I make myself do it and when I'm doing it, I do actually enjoy it.

I find if I spend an hour out on a run, I solve a few problems.

Because you kind of get into a rhythm, you think stuff through, it helps.

And you not only have kind of helped cleanse yourself physically, you've.

You've cleared some mental blockages as well.

Yeah.

So it is important for me and I do make time for it.

The other thing that's lovely is again, we talked about Sabine, but she runs as well.

Right.

So we'll do that together.

So again, you can knock this off together.

You have some nice time together.

Yeah.

And that's one of the things we value doing.

Yeah.

I mean, I got quite into.

I've just had a period of garden leaving.

I kind of made a promise to myself I was going to do 10,000 steps every day for three months.

And I used to listen to stuff like podcasts and whatever, but I started, I did a few where I forgot headphones and I was just.

So I ended actually just started doing that because, I mean, like you say the amount of good thinking you can do, you don't.

I think you quite underestimate how much time you spend just kind of thinking about stuff or listening to stuff.

You don't spend much time just.

Just kind of free do it.

So I think that's a really good bit of advice.

But the other.

The other nice thing you said in there is you.

You said you do it every day.

Yeah.

So you're forming a habit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

And once you've formed the habit, they're hard to form.

Yeah.

But once you've formed them, it just becomes part of your natural rhythm in the way you sort your day out.

Definitely.

And then it just happens.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm struggling a little bit now.

I'm back working, but I'm trying to keep to it.

So I guess the kind of final point before we get onto some kind of quick fire questions I want to talk about is just more generally kind of the view on insurance.

Now, you've obviously been around in the insurance sector for quite a While you've seen lots of change in evolution, what's your kind of view on, on where the insurance industry's at from a tech perspective now and I guess more specifically what the big challenges are for the industry over the next few years and how you see that panning out?

Big question.

Sorry.

Yeah.

And I think it depends about what part you're in the industry, whether you're sitting there as a startup and there's a super exciting.

Although some of those are going through a tougher time at the moment or whether you're at the scale end with a carrier.

Different challenges.

I think the thing that's similar across it is we're using tech more than we ever have been.

We've got a more voice at the table than we ever have done and I genuinely think we're creating more value through technology than we've ever done before.

So I think it's a really exciting time to be part of it.

Whether you're part of it as a startup, as we've noted, I've been fortunate.

I've done some of that.

Or right at the scale end or anywhere in between, you keep focusing on how are you bringing technology value to the business and it's easier to do and it's faster to do and it's a more exciting time to do it than ever before.

I don't think there's ever been a more exciting time to be a cio.

And within the insurance industry, another kind of set of words that our group CIO goes is technology has never moved this fast before.

Yeah.

It'll never move this slowly again.

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

What an amazing place to be.

Yeah, yeah.

You mean the.

What did I see the other day that someone said about AI, they said like the, the AR you use today is the worst AR you'll ever use.

So it's kind of the same kind of thing, isn't it?

It's that it's, it's evolving really quickly.

So, right, we're coming towards the end.

I always do a few quick fire questions at the, at the end just for, for a bit of fun.

So my first question is, which brand or company do you most admire and why?

It's toughie, actually.

So I said, I came here on a lime bike this morning.

I've got a love hate relationship with lime bikes.

So again, I think they're disrupting how we travel in London, but they're, they're a pain in the backside when they're left all over the place.

Yeah, yeah.

But I think that anything that's that's disruptive is a.

I like unicorns.

So we've got a lot of fintech unicorns, whether it's the Challenger banks and I bank with Challenger banks, so I enjoy those brands.

So I'm not so much a big brand.

Although again, I'm very impressed with what Satya Nadella has done around Microsoft and how he's reinvented Microsoft over the last n years.

So there's a whole bunch of them out there, but I think more for me it's Challenger brands.

Yeah.

Okay.

The next one is what is the one piece of advice that you wish someone had given you when.

When you were kind of first starting out?

I heard someone else ask this question the other day and they said I wouldn't have given myself any advice because the journey is as important as the destination.

Yeah, okay.

Which I think is a Buddhist thing, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, maybe, but.

But I think that's really important.

So the advice I'd give is enjoy every moment of the journey as you're on it.

Yeah.

And it goes back to some of the stuff we talked about.

Being curious.

Yeah.

Taking a few risks, enjoy it along the way and bring your best self to work every day.

That would be my advice.

I thought you were going to say, always put your head around the door and talk to someone.

That's.

That's the most poignant thing I've noticed for this is like if you do that a few times, you, you never know.

You can kind of create your own luck.

Right?

Yeah.

You never know when the opportunity is going to present.

Right.

Yeah.

The next one is.

So if you could swap jobs or lives with someone for, for one day, who would it be?

Oh, where would I go?

So, so my, my partner works in guys hospital and she works on, on the, in the cancer wards.

Right.

And doing stuff around cancer pathways and, and she comes home at the end of the day and we say, I've had a bit of a rough day.

And she just gives me that sideways look and goes really Giles.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

So she keeps me amazingly balanced.

I.

I would love to do her job.

Job for a day and understand what hard really looks like.

Yeah.

So.

So she goes for incredible lows and incredible highs when they've diagnosed somebody and seen them come through.

Yeah.

Okay.

So what, what job would I like to do?

Something that's really on the front line of health and helping, helping people get better and that, that I think is, is incredibly admirable.

Do you think the.

I know it's not exactly health but education is, it is kind of, of in that more public service kind of space.

Do you think at some point in your career you go back to doing some stuff like that?

So I really enjoyed that time and I'm pleased I did it.

Would I go back and do it more towards the end of my career?

If it's in an advisory role or it's a helping out, I'd love to do more stuff around that again.

So I've done work through my career whether it's been.

I did some work for the Dame Kelly Holmes fund for the 30% club, which is helping coach women into the top leadership roles.

So I think doing that as a stream alongside what you do, where you're giving back every day and through the year is really important.

And particularly as I've had a bunch of people who've supported me to get where I am, giving back is really important.

And we'll start talking more and more about kind of apprenticeships, you know, summer jobs, interns, we do a load of that as Brown and Brown and really gearing that those programs up so we're giving back into the community.

Yeah.

Is incredibly important.

So whether I do that as a role or I do that as part of my role.

Yeah, I'd love to do more of that.

Yeah.

The next one is what is the best kind of business or non fiction related book that you've, you've ever read?

So our.

I'll answer slightly differently.

So Powell Brown, our CEO, avid reader.

Right.

Okay.

All right.

So I, I went into a business review after six months with him and the rest of the opco.

And so how are you doing in six months?

What's your strategy?

What's your plan?

How you getting on?

Like yeah, the hour and a half under the spotlight.

Yeah.

And at the end he said, I'm going to send you a book, Charles.

Right.

And about two weeks ago a book popped up so I can't not read it.

Startup Nation.

Okay.

And it talks about creating a culture of innovation at a national level.

And very much it's not a kind of top down, it's very much grassroots embedding innovation and challenge through a nation and how it thinks.

And this nation then has more startups per capita than, than any other just because of the way that's built into your culture.

So it's all about cultural journeys and building innovation into cultural journeys.

So I'm enjoying that at the moment.

So you're still on it?

I'm still on it.

Definitely need to finish it before I see him next But I'm really enjoying it.

I'm really enjoying it.

And it resonates a lot across kind of that culture of innovation we're trying to bring in as we shift our mix from change, from run to change, to innovate.

And I think as we talked about that, that's what sparked it off for him.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Right, well, here's how we build a culture of innovation.

Our culture is really important.

And making it innovative and making it from the grassroots up, it's not all about driving it down.

It's about allowing it to bubble up as well.

Yeah, yeah, I'll have to check that out.

That's quite relevant for some of the stuff I've been doing more recently.

The best career decision you ever made, Right?

It's almost the accidents that have happened.

Yeah.

Okay.

So we talked about how did I get into it in the first place?

Well, that was a bit of an accident.

How did I get my first CIO role?

That was a bit of a risk.

So I think the best decisions I've made is I've known roughly the direction I've wanted to go on, so I've had some guidance around it.

I've been quite fluid about the decisions I've made.

I think, as I think more about it, what's helped me get through all of that is the people and my network.

So I think there's a decision around how you leave places and do you leave them on really good terms, and that's totally possible to do.

How do you keep your network vibrant and alive?

And how are you helping your network out?

Because you'll need to call on it for help at times and be nice to people on the way up, because you'll be on the way down at some stage as well, and it's not straight lines.

So the best career decisions, I think, are probably around investing in your network and your relationships.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

And then the final one is, who's the.

Who's the number one person you.

You admire or your role model?

Who's.

Who's the person that springs to mind when you.

When you think of that?

I think I've just had a bunch of really good leaders as I've gone through my career, whether that was actress in rm, in rsa, in Open GI and where I am at Brown and Brown now.

So it's the leaders you choose to follow.

And I make my career decisions now about the people I'm working with as much as anything else.

Look to your boss, look to your leaders at the moment.

And go, are those the role models I want to follow?

And keep questioning that.

And if they are, fabulous.

If they're not, find someone who is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Great bit of advice.

So I always say, look, we're right at the end now.

Look, thanks for your time.

It's been amazing.

Time's flown by.

I always ask everyone the last question before we finish.

What's the best thing about working in insurance?

I think if you go back to, why are we here anyway?

What does insurance do for people?

So.

So if your car, your home, your business, your life has been hit by some kind of adversity, we're here to help you through it.

That's the best thing about insurance.

We help people when they need it most.

Keep that in mind and keep focused on.

That's why we're here.

Everything else will follow.

But when you see some of the stuff we do, when we pick people back up again and we go the extra mile when they need it, it.

That's the best thing about insurance for me.

Yeah, I agree with you.

To be honest, I don't think the industry celebrates and publicizes those successes well enough.

I think there's often a bit of a negative context about insurance, but actually, if they.

The odd one or two bad experience like there is in any industry, if they.

If you just compare that to all the problems it solves and kind of digs people out of seriously deep holes, it's.

It's.

Yes.

Yeah, it's great.

It's a great place to be.

Yeah, it's a great place to be.

We're helping people live their lives and pick themselves back up from adversity and carry on.

That.

That's an awesome thing to be able to do.

Yeah.

What a great place to finish.

Well, look, thank.

Thank you so much.

Look, that story is amazing.

There's some brilliant bits of advice in there and I really appreciate you taking the time to.

To speak to us.

I'm sure there'll be some people that want to reach out and connect with you.

Is LinkedIn kind of.

Are you open for people to kind of.

To reach out and say hello and.

Yeah, absolutely.

Send me.

Send me a LinkedIn Connect or a LinkedIn message and go.

Go from there.

Like I said, the network's important, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Well, look, there's.

There's plenty more episodes to come, so, like I say, thanks again for your time.

Connect with myself or Giles, if you're interested in having a chat and we'll catch you next time.

Cheers.

Thanks very much, Mike.

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

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