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, is 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.

Nicky on Intern Podcast.

How you doing?

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, all good, thank you.

Good stuff.

So we'll go right to the start and just get you to introduce yourself and then we go right back to the start of your career and work through from there and see where we get to.

Long old time back.

Yeah, go for it.

So yeah, if you want to kind of give a quick intro and then.

Away we go, no problem.

So Nikki Tang, I'm the current CIO at Tokyo Marine International.

Been there for coming up six years now.

It's a long old time.

First gig in insurance.

I'm sure we'll touch on that a little bit later on.

But yes, it's been a, it's been a fun old journey, especially considering I never wanted to get into it in the first place.

Yeah, sure, we can cover that too.

Well, let's go.

Let's go right back then.

So talk me through kind of the early years, like when you kind of.

Did you go university and do that kind of thing?

What did that.

What did the.

What did the early days look like?

I remember a careers advisor at school when I was 17, 18 and they said, oh, what do you, what do you want to do?

And I said not sure, but anything so long as it's not it.

Yeah, because my dad, he's by trade an analytical chemist, but he is one of those people that frustrates me as a CIO because he's one of those shadow it, self taught, build something, install it on various machines and then have no support for it whatsoever.

So he was that kind of person and I just didn't want to be geeky is strange really because I am a closet geek.

I taught myself VB when I was 11, picked up one of my dad's books, learned VB in 24 hours and I took it literally and I did that so but I was fighting against it as a kind of 17 year old teenage girl I wanted to do something a bit more interesting so not it and I said oh okay.

And we kind of settled on something maybe something like law barrister, go and kind of make my case in court.

I do like talking, I do like winning an argument as my husband will no doubt agree with.

So that's where I thinking of going but I wasn't sure and university for me it was a big financial commitment and I didn't really have the background where that was just we couldn't just say yeah, definitely go to university, it'll all be fine.

Didn't come from that.

So I decided to take a year out Decide really is that what I want to do?

And I looked, looked around at jobs and the bank of England, they came to my school and they did a presentation and they had some jobs working in bullion.

So that's working with all the gold, weighing it, checking it all exists still and I thought oh that'll be great for a year, you know, playing with gold.

Who would not want to do that?

So I went for the job and my best friend also went for the job and she got the job.

Right?

I didn't get the job but they said look, we see you've got a part time job in PC World.

Again my secret geek was trying to come out.

It was trying to come out.

We see you've got a job in PC World.

We, we have an opening in it.

Do you want, do you want that instead?

Well, it's a year, it's a year.

So I said yeah, that's fine, you know, I need the money, I need a job.

Let's, let's go with that.

So I took it and I absolutely adored it.

Yeah, yeah.

So what was the job?

It was a junior analyst programmer is what they called back then.

Yeah, I think we should go back to those working with cobol.

Okay.

So I was working with the bank's real time gross settlement system which is pretty much the heart of all the transactions.

All the kind of backs transactions, chaps, transactions all go through this.

If companies want, if banks want to send money to each other they use rtgs all written in COBOL back in the day and this was 20 odd, probably near enough 30, 30 years ago now.

And it was all about Y2K at the time when I first joined.

So really, really very exciting.

It was the change move into the Euro as well.

Yeah.

So had an opportunity to rewrite all the systems to take on this new currency.

Absolutely loved it.

And I think what I didn't understand when I was younger is the creative element of it.

Yeah.

It is not just a geek sit away in a room and code.

Although that is quite good as well.

Yeah.

But you get to talk to people, you solve problems.

Yeah.

And I think that's a bit that a lot of people don't always appreciate.

They just think it is a, a technical coding thing but it's solving problems that was really got me excited.

Yeah.

So how did that evolve then?

So you, so you did that year, did, did that year turn into two, three, four years?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

Okay.

At the bank of England, right.

I say 13 years but there was so much opportunity there and I had, I had constant support in career progression throughout my time at bank of England.

I've been, I've been very, very fortunate to have some really good bosses who I've worked for and who have helped develop and promote me.

It's that true sponsorship rather than just mentorship.

I had sponsors, I think.

Yeah, we didn't call them that back then.

They were just a good boss that you like to work for.

But I did have that sponsorship and I kind of rotated around to begin with.

So I had a couple of years as a developer and then I had about 18 months as a system tester.

And that was actually really beneficial because as a coder you don't always see the disasters that can occur when you create code that is not of the best quality.

Yeah.

As a tester you get to appreciate the real end to end.

So had kind of 18 months of two years in, in testing team and then the world of, of the web appeared.

We started to get the Internet.

Yeah.

So then I was moved on to a team that started building web applications and developed the Freedom of Information Application.

Okay.

At the bank of England.

And that was the first one using a kind of agile type methodology.

The bank of England was a fantastic place to start a career.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because they, they did everything right.

They did everything by the book.

Yeah.

You know, they, they didn't do kind of half assed measures when adopting sort of Agile and Scrum.

They would, they brought in the Scrum alliance to train us all up everyone for the business, everyone bought into it.

I was developing as per the letter of scrum, not just picking the best bits.

Yeah.

Which people tend to do with agile.

So I had a real good grounding and just kind of like evolved from there, really.

There was always new opportunity.

I was spoiled terribly at the bank in all of the opportunities and I.

I just kind of assumed that's the way of the world.

Yeah.

And everything was the same.

Everything.

Everyone worked in that way.

Because I joined 18.

Yeah.

And it was like a family.

That was like my.

My university period, really.

So.

Yeah, it was.

So what.

So how did that evolve?

You mean in regards to kind of what.

What was the last role?

What kind of level did you get to when you.

Before you finished up and moved on from there?

It was up to team lead.

So I had my two.

I had two boys.

Yeah.

And they're now coming up 17 and 19.

Right.

So during that period at the bank, that's when I.

I got married, I started a family.

Yeah.

And lots of life events throughout that period.

Lots of life events, yeah.

Which was.

Which was challenging.

It was.

Wasn't easy.

The bank was a very good, supportive employer, though.

When I came back after my second child, he was born in 2008.

Yeah.

And that was the same time as financial crisis hit.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And we had everyone running around working out what exposure we had to these banks going bankrupt.

And back in those days, it was still all Excel spreadsheets, putting all of that together.

And then one of my bosses came to me, said, look, Nikki, you've just returned for return 2 leave.

Yep.

You like new things, don't you?

Yep, I like new things.

We founded this thing called a data warehouse.

We think one of those would be really useful right now.

Can you help build.

Build one.

So got together a small team of us and we started to build what we called Credit Risk bi, which was the foundations of a data warehouse to help understand a lot more about the exposure that we have.

And just evolved from there.

And that got me into the world of business intelligence and data and then evolved into the team lead role.

And that's where I got to at the bank.

My kids at the time were, I think, three and five, still quite young.

And the bank of England is one of those places you could stay forever.

It's a job for life.

And a lot of people do.

A lot of people that I worked with are still.

Still there today.

Yeah.

And I could do that.

I could have stayed.

I could have taken the comfy option.

But I thought, actually, no, I want Something a little bit more fast paced because the bank is probably not the fastest moving and neither should it be.

You know, you don't want that for your central bank to be like innovative.

Let's go for the next greatest thing because that would have been a complete disaster.

But I wanted something a bit more, I want to be stretched a bit more and so I thought okay, I think now's the time to start looking.

Looking elsewhere.

Yeah.

And so what was the next step?

EDF trading.

So going from a very smooth kind of full on environment that was full on trading which was so exciting.

And again that was brought in to develop their first data platform, their first data warehouse.

Working directly with the traders and building up the team.

So it was as the, I think it's BI and integration team lead I think.

So were you still quite technically hands on in those roles?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

So I think yeah very much hands on.

EDF trading was the one way I probably then moved more into the manager space.

Yeah, that was hard for any techie start to take a, a back step.

I had some great people on my team, luckily so many of who I still keep in contact with even today.

So it was really, really strong team there.

So But I had to learn how to, how to let go.

Yeah.

And just because people were developing things in a way that maybe I wouldn't have.

If the outcomes are same, maybe that's okay.

Yeah, it took a long, long, long time.

I know some of my ex colleagues would say yeah it took a very long time.

Yeah we had to start turning off your access so that you wouldn't get in there and start fixing things.

But yeah, that was, that was when I started to move into that more of that, that management role was it.

Was that was that kind of by design or did that kind of evolve just kind of organically?

Because I think it's a really good point that you make about techies kind of moving into being able to do a, some kind of kind of managerial role.

People based role rather than doing the technical design, delivery, development stuff is a barrier lots of people never get over or struggle with or actually lots of people don't do it and necessarily think they don't want to do it and actually prefer doing the role.

So did you, did, did you kind of purposely try to do that?

Was it always an ambition that you wanted to evolve to?

And again back to, back to the bank of England they had a very structured hierarchy of where you want to go.

So you had different levels that came up and at a certain Level, I think level four or something like that.

People who still work at the bank will remember you had an option, you could go down the managerial or the technical professional route.

So it's always in the back of my mind that I knew I had to make that decision.

Um, and I do like working with people.

I do like helping grow and lead and kind of shape teams.

So I did know that the manage management route was probably the one that I wanted to go down.

But it is a.

It's a challenge.

It's a challenge I face in my role now as cio to make sure we have technical pathways for those that don't want to be managers.

Something we're discussing at the moment.

You know, you go through all of the interview review sessions and you have your top performers.

What next for them?

Oh, we've got these management roles, but that might not be the right route for them.

They are fantastic techies, they like doing technology.

So we should.

We should look for pathways for.

For them to thrive in that space.

Not necessarily have to start managing people because it might make them sad.

You know, you should lean into what they're great at.

Right, yeah.

I mean, I know exactly.

You see that.

I think you see that a lot, that the natural pathway is to.

Is to turn it.

Go into a kind of managerial leadership role.

That's the.

The kind of expected, obvious route, but the kind of individual contributor or something like that is.

Is still.

You need.

Like you need those people, you don't.

Want to lose them.

Yeah, you definitely do.

And that we're trying to work out at the moment now how we can help facilitate that.

Yeah.

Because again, you don't want to lose good people.

All they'll do is leave and go work for someone else.

Yeah, exactly.

So.

So you were there for a few years or so and then you.

I think you.

We were talking just off camera about the fact you went into density for a bit.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a kind of theme.

I like to try stuff.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

I don't like to settle.

So I've been at EDF Trading for about five, six years, Right.

And this was.

I wasn't actually looking for a job then I just got cold, called by a recruiter and said, oh, yeah, we've got this head of the eye at Denso Aegis, a media company.

Do you fancy it?

I was like, I'll give it, you know, give it a go.

Just see.

See what it's like.

Go for the interviews.

And it was working for their finance transformation program, so there's Still a kind of overlap with my financial services background.

It wasn't completely out there again in the data space.

So head of BI starting to build the finance data warehouse that we built for them.

And it was massive because it's a rollout across, well, globally.

Dentsu was the biggest organization I've ever worked for.

Massive, really.

Tens of thousands of people in the finance department.

And it was.

Struggled to get your head around that.

When I came from EDF Trading, where we had probably about 10 people.

Yeah.

It's like, whoa, okay, this is, this is a big task.

Learned a lot because there was a.

Because it's not so regulated.

A fantastic opportunity to try new things.

So if, if I'd said at the bank of England, right, I want to go.

Want to go cloud.

They're like, oh, slow down.

Yeah, hold your horses there, Nikki.

If I said that, it's like, yeah, okay, let's give it a go.

Let's try it out.

That was, that was enjoyable.

It was good learning.

But I did miss the kind of, the rigor of financial services.

I think there's, there's a culture, there's a culture that I kind of missed about the more kind of traditional focus on.

On making money, getting things delivered.

I think with marketing, it's, it's how, how exciting we can be and the next best thing and talking a lot about stuff, but not so much focus on making the money, really.

And that's what kind of missed.

Again, commercial aspect.

Yeah, commercial aspect.

Yeah, definitely.

Rather than just trying out lots of new ideas.

That was fun for a couple of years.

Yeah.

But I wanted, I wanted something more.

I wanted to really kind of drive a company forward.

Yeah.

And it.

Dental was big, so you could make a difference in your own area, so within the kind of finance area.

But I wanted to make more of a difference to a whole company.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So when the opportunity came with Tokyo Marine hcc, I, I jumped at it, really.

And again, that wasn't something I wasn't, I wasn't looking.

And I think that that kind of shifts, doesn't it?

As you go your career, you don't necessarily look.

It's opportunities kind of find you.

Yeah.

And I interviewed and I interviewed with Katherine Letzinger, cfo Nick Hutton Penman, who was the COO at the time.

And actually, I think I had about seven interviews at dmhc.

They did used to go through a massive interview process.

Yeah.

As you'd know.

But I liked the people.

Yeah.

I thought this, this feels.

It reminded me of the bank.

That kind of almost family like.

Yeah.

That I think you get in insurance.

That maybe banking's lost its way in as it's grown bigger.

But I definitely.

It was like going back in time in more ways than one.

Yeah.

You know insurance companies that.

The big insurance companies aren't that big, are they in comparison to banks?

I mean they're really big insurers of the kind of the Aviva's.

The world are not anything compared to HSBC or Barclays.

Yeah, I can see, I can see where you, where the similarities would be there.

So what did you, you mean.

Obviously you weren't light years away from insurance with, with banking and stuff like that, but it was a first.

Yeah.

You mean what did you, what was that like?

I mean did you mean.

Obviously it wasn't a kind of something you did on purpose.

You've kind of insurance found you rather than you finding insurance.

But what, what did that, what was that like?

You mean you've been, you've been kind of in insurance for half a decade now.

How's it, how's it been?

There's a lot of crossover.

So I could.

Especially with trading when you think about the products.

Yeah, yeah.

Of course commodity trading is quite similar really to underwriting.

Yeah.

So that was, that was good.

I think it did feel like a little bit of a step back in time which the insurance industry is behind banking.

You know we're only starting to talk about things like straight through processing with blueprint two and things like that.

The banking world had that 20 odd years ago.

Yeah.

So it was, it was like oh, that's interesting.

Yeah.

But lots of opportunity there.

Yeah.

Because you can learn, you can learn through all the mistakes that, that all the banks went through.

Yeah.

In adopting new technologies.

Y.

But yeah, it's interesting how close knit and how everybody knows each other and yeah, it's rather incestuous.

It's quite a community.

It is.

Yeah.

We're going through a big policy administration transformation.

A lot of people out there know but all eyes are on us because we're adopting a brand new platform that everyone else is interested in adopting.

And the number of people that are saying look, we're just waiting to see, see how you guys get on with this.

I like it though.

I like that community.

I like that kind of old fashioned people side of things which I think you get more from insurance.

Yeah.

It was interesting during, during the COVID times when we all had to work from home and as soon as it was recognized that insurance was a key worker that then people started to Come back in.

Yeah.

And we kind of go back to the old, old practices of lots of face to face time.

I don't think that's, I think that's going to be slow to move away from in the assurance space and I don't want to move away from it.

I think it's good to keep that connection.

We could do things all remotely but not as efficiently as when, when we come together.

And I think that's quite unique about insurance.

Whereas other, everyone else is looking more at the going to kind of remote working, not, not face to face.

How can we digitize everything?

Well you can't especially in specialty insurance because you've got such complex products.

Yeah.

Of course you can't always automate and digitize.

Sometimes you have to that, that personal interaction to be able to kind of price it right to set up the right product for the, for the customer.

And that only comes from face to face.

Yeah, it's interesting you say that actually.

I was asked earlier today actually there about just getting some information about because.

Because there definitely seems to be an insurance now a bit more mandating people being back in the office two, three, four days a week even, sometimes even five.

I've seen, I've heard one or two examples of that and yeah, it's an interesting one.

Is it because it's that you, you end up in this kind of middle ground where lots of people happy about that and you know, I put a post on LinkedIn the other day about face to face meetings and just like kind of how much, how much more beneficial they are to like do stuff face to face rather than over, over teams and, and then there's the kind of the, even the concept of the kind of loneliness epidemic thing and stuff like that.

I mean remote working is not going to help that, is it?

So, and I, I think actually insurance has always been certainly in London it's always been very face to face both socially and, and professionally and, and that's kind of what makes it what, what it is really.

So it would be a shame to kind of lose it.

Yeah.

We have to visit lawyers to see still people going around.

Yeah.

Big paper folders and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

But it's, it's, it's kind of nice to keep some of that tradition and I, I'd hate for us to lose, lose that just because we think we should digitize everything.

I don't as it's interesting as cio.

She said I don't think we should.

No.

I think there's some things that are better done by people than better done by machines.

Yeah.

And I think the remote work in bringing people back into the office, I think is a good thing.

I think flexibility is great.

And I'm definitely all for flexibility.

As my guys, we kind of launched a culture thing in the last couple of years about kind of family first, which is to make sure that we have a working environment that suits everyone's family setup because everyone's part of some sort of community where they have kids to look after or they have parents or they're part of a social group community.

We should embrace the person as a whole and allow for that flexibility.

But we don't want to lose the benefits of face to face.

And I think it's, it's easier for people that are established in their career to say, yeah, well, I could work perfectly fine remotely.

Well, yes, you can, but what about those juniors coming up?

Yeah.

So when I started at the bank at 18, I was sat next to my mentor and I learned everything through kind of, or not everything, a lot through osmosis, just overhearing conversations, learning a lot more.

I think it's doing the next generation of people coming through a disservice not to give them those opportunities just to be involved in kind of round the office conversations.

We miss out on all of that.

And it's not something you can measure, put metrics around, but it's something we lose culture when we go too remote.

I think some of the big projects that we've been trying to do remotely during the COVID times now we've come back, it's become a lot more efficient.

Really.

Because you also, you also get this lack of, lack of personal connection.

Easy to blame, you know.

Oh, it's, it's that program.

Faceless person.

Yeah.

Who's made the, you know, that's why always it's a project manager, they don't know what they're doing.

Well, that's fine because you don't know them.

It's like the.

When you comment on social media and you get all these kind of trolls.

Yeah, yeah.

Trolling away.

Not a lot easier to criticize and complain about others when they're remote.

Yeah.

If you're in the office, you're not going to go around to someone's desk and say, oh, I think you did a terrible job there.

You know, you're an awful pm.

Try and work it out.

You try and sort it out and you, you break through some of those, some of those barriers.

I think it's a good thing to get people into the office but still allow for flexibility.

Yeah, I think that's.

That's the key, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, I think the.

The kind of a mixture of both and have.

And flexibility doesn't always need to be work from home, does it need to somebody like start come into the office later and leave earlier, pick kids up, all that?

Because I think that's what most people really, really need is just to kind of.

Certainly when they get a bit more senior and they get.

But.

But yeah, I think you're right.

I think the.

The learning by osmosis thing is massive.

And you're right, you can't measure it.

It will be measured over 10 years rather than a few weeks.

But at this point in the timeline, you're at.

You're at TMHCC joined in kind of continuing in that kind role.

A couple of really key topics I wanted.

I wanted to get into, which I don't necessarily be totally unique to you, but semi unique to you is I would have thought there would have been an obvious route potentially to go into like a CDO role or carry on down the data route.

But your evolution was into CIO role.

So there's kind of two points there.

One, why did you kind of gravitate towards that bit rather than continuing down the data route?

And two, it'd be really good to understand kind of how you got that opportunity, because I think getting the first CIO gig is always the hardest one.

Right.

And there's various ways people can do it.

I mean, I must talk people through it on a daily basis on how they get there.

So it will definitely be one of the key questions that people want to understand how it happened.

And I think it's different for everyone as well.

Yeah, I think it's a kind of opportunistic element.

But to take the first question, why cio not cdo?

I always wanted to go into the CIO space, always.

I think once I.

Once I'd come to.

Got peace with the idea actually that I was an IT person, it was.

I like the leadership aspect, I like the strategic piece and I like getting ideas together and delivering on them collaboratively with a whole department and bringing people along with my ideas.

You can do that as a cdo, but it's still very specific in that data space and your reach is limited and it's very, very focused.

I think one of the things from my career is I do like to learn new things all the time.

I don't want to be pigeonholed.

And I saw CIO as more of an opportunity to get into some of the spaces that I hadn't had experience in, rather than continuing to deep dive in the.

In my comfort zone.

I never stay in my comfort zone at all because I'll get bored and I'll get disruptive, probably.

So I like to kind of challenge myself always.

So that's really why I wanted to more get into that CIO space.

And I think the area that I didn't have when I took on the role was the infrastructure side and the networking.

Never been involved in any of that.

I've come from the software development and data path, but that was something I hadn't been involved in, something I was interested in and bringing kind of everything together.

I think that appealed to me.

So kind of broad rather than.

Rather than deep.

Well, at what point in your.

In that kind of career journey we've just gone through, did you.

Did you think CIO was.

That was the.

Was the kind of role.

Was there a point where it became.

Because it sounds like the early career, like most people really is just kind of organic.

They just kind of fall into different things, get an opportunity, take it, and.

And there's not necessarily a plan as such.

Was there a point in your career where the plan kind of.

There was a plan.

I don't know if there's a plan, but there was a.

Right now this sounds.

This is where I want to be heading.

It was at the bank of England and it was towards the end of it, we had a new CIO come in, a guy called Simon Moorhead.

And I remember him coming in and thinking, I'd quite like to do what he.

And actually, I remember I had an end of year appraisal once with.

It was.

I just remembered this.

At the bank of England, you had an end of year appraisal with your boss, and then you had an end of year appraisal with your boss's boss.

Okay, so my boss's boss was pretty much kind of CIO minus one.

Yeah.

At that time.

And he said, well, what do you.

What do you, you know, where do you want to go in your career?

What sort of job do you want?

I said, well, I'd quite like yours, actually.

Yeah, I remember having that.

That conversation.

And it was probably at that stage that I thought, no, that's so relatively early on then.

Relatively early, yeah.

I must have been kind of in my late 20s, early 30s.

Yeah, that's.

That's where I want to go.

And there was kind of maybe not necessarily a direct plan, but a Kind of a bit of the North Star.

Kind of where you knew you headed.

This is the sort of thing I enjoy.

I just saw some of the strategic work they were doing.

Yeah, yeah, very much problem solving, but on a much bigger scale than problem solving for specific.

Writing a piece of code to solve a problem.

This is solving an organizational problem.

Yeah, that really appealed to me and I think it was that I was always heading in that CIO path, I think.

Okay, so let's talk a little bit about how that came about.

Yeah, yeah.

I think luck plays a massive part in it.

I do think I was in the right place at the right time.

So I started at TMHCC at the start of a big growth journey.

I mean, I said before off camera that TMHC tends to fly below the radar.

And when I joined, we were kind of every year is exponentially getting more, more, more successful.

And that meant there was a lot of transformation that needed to happen when I joined because the shape of the organization when I joined was great to get us where we were, but if we continued on this trajectory of growth, it was not going to be suitable for the future.

Yeah.

Quite a complex business with lots of different, lots of different businesses in one, isn't it?

Yeah, it's not really just one.

Yeah, it's like six or seven or something.

Yeah, about six.

Probably you can categorize it around six products that we sell and very, very complicated products as well.

Not kind of your standard car insurance type products.

It's very, very bespoke.

So, yeah, lots of transformation, especially in, in the IT space.

Yeah.

And there was that appreciation.

And this is the other thing I like about TMHCC is we, we have very smart people in our, in our exec.

We don't have any of those people that have just been there since day one and they're just, they're there because they, they've always been there.

Yeah, these, a lot of these people have been there from day one.

But my God, they are brilliant, brilliant people sitting at that exact layer.

And the exec realized that, yes, we've grown the front office massively.

I still use banking terminology.

We've grown the underwriting side massively, but we have underinvested in the back office.

So we went through a transformation, lots of change, which meant lots of opportunity.

So I was able to move out of the head of BI role into kind of an enterprise services role, which encompass bi, but also some of the other things like policy administration, systems integration systems, looking at our digital portals and growing that so my portfolio, portfolio grew and I was really fortunate that at that time we had a new CIO start.

So Des Burke, who lots of people in the industry will know, he's a, he's a well known character out there, very, very experienced and I was able to learn so much from him from the IT transformation that we did, moving to a product operating model from a traditional model which was not going to be scalable for the future.

And I was in there from day one with him learning all of this, kind of being his kind of right hand man really.

And it was almost just like a natural progression when the COO role came up and Des took that, I was given the opportunity to then kind of step into the CIO role.

So I mean, it's kind of good time, very good timing because I joined Tokyo Marine just at the, just at the point where it was just about to take off.

Lots and lots of restructuring, lots and lots of opportunity and I was just a fortunate winner through, through that, I think.

Yeah, I mean, I guess that's often the way it goes, isn't it?

You get, you get a boss who then moves up, who mentors you into that ride.

Was, was DEZ kind of a real ally, kind of mentor like support into that?

Like did he.

Did.

Do you think he kind of spotted that you were his successor?

I, I think so.

I think, I think he did a lot behind the scenes as well.

Again, talking about this kind of sponsor.

I've had two great sponsors actually in my career.

Yeah.

One very early on, a guy called Fitos Panio.

Two who was my first ever boss.

Right.

And he would put me into situations which I, I didn't think I was ready for, but he did.

Yeah.

And I succeeded in those situations.

I would never have gone for them if he didn't say yet, Nikki, I think you can do this.

You know, I think you can present to all these what appeared very, very old at the time, chaps, board members, the, the kind of new dashboard that we were putting over the top of rtgs.

I didn't feel I could, but he felt I could.

And I think it's interesting to kind of bookend in the two pieces because I think in the later stage of my career, Des did exactly the same thing.

Yeah, yeah, he was, he was my cheerleader.

I know he was.

Always gave lots and lots of, lots and lots of feedback.

Feedback.

Des has this great habit of you have your kind of one to ones every week with him and at the end of it he'll say, just got a bit of feedback for you.

Yeah.

And you know, it's not going to be a good feedback thing, you know, that's going to be.

Well, in that meeting, I think you could have maybe handled this a bit better.

And you're always like, oh yes, I know, but it was good.

It was all constructive stuff.

Constructive.

It was for my benefit.

And that's what I think he's done through the whole of, of of my career.

And I, I know I wouldn't have got CIO role if it wasn't for, for his support and, and sponsorship.

Yeah, that's massively important, isn't it?

I think it's under.

I mean, I think lots of people talk about mentors and sponsors and, and kind of allies, all these kind of things.

But, but having someone on the job who, because I mean, I've had kind of mentors at arm's reach that don't work with me and stuff like that.

And you kind of have those meetings, you kind of want to get gleam as much out of an hour or so with them as you can.

But there's nothing quite like having someone who's kind of there in the trenches with you day in, day out, being able to pick out the little things you do.

Because often it's those little, those little 1% that actually is what, that's the improvement you need, isn't it?

It's not the kind of big ticket stuff that's kind of.

You can learn that on kind of yourself or courses or whatever you wanted to do.

Yeah, but it's the day to day real life stuff.

It's.

So those tweaks, those small adjustments.

One of the things he said, it was really good advice actually, is that you don't have to always kind of try and rush in there to speak because now you have a seat at the table and people are going to be waiting for you and you can command a room better if you're not trying to kind of keep jumping in there.

You don't have to kind of speak over people.

Just, just sit back and then give your comment and then people will listen.

You know, you don't have to fight for the airspace anymore because you've got to seat at the table.

I thought that's quite good because I.

Think you mean in an environment where you kind of think maybe if you don't speak up, then you don't.

It might get to end.

You might not get your say.

You kind of always want to get in there first.

That's a really great piece of advice.

Yeah, I think so.

So is the CIO everything you thought it was going to be?

Yeah, I think pretty much.

That was also the benefit of kind of.

Of shadowing.

Was it like a gradual kind of you start to take on more, more.

No, it wasn't.

It was like, okay, right, this is happening.

Yeah.

Right.

Effective from now.

Oh, okay, great.

Yeah, that's fine.

I think I can do this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But no, it was.

That's good.

That's also great confidence booster, isn't it?

Like, surely having, like.

I mean, it's interesting the way you.

Because the way you looked, you mentioned it.

I was going to touch on it is.

Is the way that you see insurance now.

Because I think lots of people from outside of insurance, like, I'm, I'm.

You would have seen me probably put on LinkedIn.

I'm always harping on about people getting people from outside of insurance to come into insurance in certain roles.

Because if you want to change how we do things and modernize and all that kind of stuff, you need to.

You need different ideas and a blend is that is kind of, for me is that has to be the perfect way.

But lots of people from outside think, I'm not going back 20 years and doing what we did before.

The people that are right see that as like, I can go back 20 years.

I've learned all this stuff.

I can really make an impact there.

And there's loads of stuff to do and they get invigorated by that, which is kind of what I use.

But having someone around you as well who has got the confidence in you to put you straight into that thing, if you still look at it, it depends which way you look at it.

One can be quite scary.

But the other half is.

I mean, that's a confidence boost.

Right.

And I kind of knew he was still there because he was.

Yeah.

It's not going anywhere.

It was.

Okay.

Well, that was a plus and a minus.

Yeah.

A benefit of going in as a fresh person and your CIO has now left.

Yeah.

You could say, oh, no, you know that that's an awful idea.

Let's do it this way.

And there were some things that I wanted to change that he'd put in place that I wanted a.

I didn't think was the right way of doing things.

And so it wasn't just, I couldn't go out there and declare to my team, right, this is how we're doing it now.

He's done a terrible job there.

Yes, awful.

Look, look at those mess.

I'm going to inherit.

I couldn't do that I didn't have a mess to inherit.

I mean, I was part and part of it.

Yeah.

Delivering it.

So that would be disingenuous to suggest that, but there were things I wanted to do differently.

But then I had to also persuade my boss who put those things in place, that, no, actually this is the way, this is the way forward.

So that was, that was interesting.

Good negotiation, I think.

Skills I had to learn through that way and, and persuasion.

What would you say?

Because I'm always interested in getting kind of bits of snippets of advice you've already given loads of brilliant ones that you've kind of gathered along the way.

But from your own perspective and your own learning, what would you say are the kind of two or three things that were really critical in you kind of getting that role?

Because.

And some of it may have been like kind of just before you got the role, but some of it may have been like really early in your career.

But if you were giving advice to someone who is now kind of, I don't know, just getting into technology or early on in their career and they've got, they've, they've seen that kind of similar North Star that you did, what, what do you think?

What building blocks did you.

I guess you put in place to make sure you got, you got that further down the line now reflecting, I.

Think you need to make sure you're confident that you've delivered things.

Yeah.

You know, not just talking about things, not just, you know, a few proof of concepts or thinking about things, but you've got that confidence that comes through from actually taking.

Taking something from start to end and delivering it and seeing it all the way through.

I think that's really, really important to give yourself that confidence that, yes, I can, I can do this.

Yeah, I think I do see quite a few people that kind of start off at the.

Maybe get involved in the beginning of projects and then.

Or actually when the rubber hits the road and the really difficult bits happen, maybe jump ship and go to something else and don't see themselves through that really tough part of the blood, sweat and tears of getting something live, getting something delivered.

So I think for your own confidence, proving to yourself you can deliver and get things done end to end.

I think that's really, really important.

Don't be distracted when it gets tough and jump ship too early because there's so much learning when times are tough, it's less learning when it's.

When it's straightforward.

So I think that's something and Then when you can prove to yourself and you have the confidence in yourself, your ability to deliver, you can kind of sell that to others as well.

You can, you can speak confidently about the things that you have done in the past, which then for.

For your leadership and your exec, they look at you, think, okay, it can be done because you personally have done this before.

Yeah.

And then you.

That was definitely the case with, with some of the BI spaces.

You know, some of the things that we wanted to deliver.

But I've done this.

It's not, you know, it's not impossible.

And I can talk through some of the pain points that we've.

We've gone through and deliver it again now.

So I think have the.

Having the confidence to.

From end to end delivery really, really key, I think to get you to that next level and get you recognized.

The other thing is probably don't be afraid of taking on the scary opportunities.

Yeah.

So even at tmhcc, I remember the exec coming to me to ask for me to step up into this kind of broader role.

This is just for des.

Des joined.

I'm like, I mean, I've only been here for like 12 months.

I'm not, you know.

Yeah.

And.

And this was something that was difficult for me because we did have a project that I had to kind of step away from.

Yeah.

Then in the BI space.

In the BI space.

I really wanted to see.

See through.

But I was, I was given an opportunity to widen my remit.

I thought it would be.

It would be silly to say no.

Yes.

This opportunity, I can do more.

I can help shape some of the more strategic side of things.

That's, that's what I want to do.

So, yes, I will.

We'll take it on.

But it, it's scary.

Yeah.

It's scary going into something where you think maybe I'm going to fail.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Take.

Take opportunities, take the risk.

What's the worst that can happen?

The worst that can happen is, is you fail and then you just go somewhere else.

Go back and do what you did before.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you don't like it.

Yeah.

It's not the worst thing.

At least you've tried.

Yeah.

And I mean, even branching out of financial services into marketing was a bit of a risk.

And in all honesty, it probably wasn't the, the domain for me, but I'm glad I tried it.

Yeah.

I learned a lot and I learned that I prefer to be in financial services.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

When you could kind of double down.

One of the things that I think again and maybe you don't underestimate is you've, you've done a lot of variety in, in your, do you think that's important?

Because I guess once you, once you get to like, you tend to, you see a lot of people.

I mean obviously I speak to lots and lots of people about their jobs and stuff like that that they, they, they, they tend to stay kind of very much in their lane.

Which I think it going back to what you're saying, if you want to be that kind of individual contributor then that, that, that, that's great.

Right.

You become a real sm.

But if you're going to do the CIO role like it seems to me that you're kind of software into data, into kind of management actual the kind of hands on techie stuff bits and pit like the realization that you didn't really necessarily have the, the infrastructure piece is, is that kind of.

And, and then the variety of industry seeing how other people have done it.

Do you think that, I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm reading too much into it.

But is, is that been something now that you look back on, you think that is a, a bit of a kind of superpower that you've kind of got that variety?

No, I think, I think that variety definitely helps and I think it's, I think it's essential.

Yeah.

Coming into the future as well because it back in the day, you know, things were.

Technology was slow moving.

Yeah.

Now it's not.

Technology is super fast moving.

I mean I don't even want to actually mention AI because everyone's talking about AI but just think about it at some point.

Yeah, but it's how not the AI technology itself, but how quickly it has been adopted.

And that's going to be, that's going to be the pattern for the future.

So if you haven't had experience looking at lots of different things and you've got, haven't got that breadth, I think you're going to be at a disadvantage.

I think you need to be ready not to settle because technology is not going to settle.

Even insurance is.

It's not going to settle.

That's going to start to change.

It will have to start to change.

With the influx of new people coming into the market, both customers and employees, the culture will change and we need to be able to adapt and kind of come up with new, new ideas.

And if you're just so set in your ways and you just want to, you just focused on one thing, I think that's going to Be a challenge.

Yeah.

I think you do have to have what they'd have called back in my kids primary school days.

A growth mindset.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've definitely heard that.

So one of the actual previous guests on the, on the podcast actually said, used a quote I can't remember exactly.

I'll probably butch.

But it was something along the lines of technology has never moved as fast as it is now, but it will never move this slower, slow ever again.

And it's true.

And it's so true, isn't it?

Like the.

So kind of the being too stuck in what you're doing I think is like so it's going to be an issue.

But so.

And then I guess to kind of close off that kind of career journey bit.

Do you see yourself staying as a CIO for the long term or do you kind of have broader ambitions to kind of of similar to what does they move into the coo?

What do you think that's your.

You or like CEO even?

I, I don't know.

I mean I like cio.

I probably will stay CIO for a while.

Yep.

Not sure about CRO because it feels a bit of a.

I don't know, a bit of a kind of two mix things.

Can you really get your teeth into things?

I think one of the things I'm a bit nervous of about my, my next move up is becoming too far away from the people on the ground.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I, I don't sit in an office.

I sit on the floor.

Yeah.

And I see people that do sit in the office.

You know, so there's the cfo.

And I think I, I take that.

I'd hate to be there all lonely in my little office and maybe just peering around the corner.

I like to be on the shop floor.

Yeah.

And I do have to think about that for my, my next move.

As, as you go kind of up the career ladder, the more isolated it gets.

It's lonely at the top.

Yeah.

You know, I don't know how I'd.

How I'd adapt to that because I like people.

I guess that doesn't have to be.

You don't have to be in that office though, do I mean you can create.

I mean it'd be interesting.

What should we take on the kind of, the, the kind of CEO role and how that evolves?

Because certainly from a kind of external perspective with AI and the way kind of automation's going, naturally you would think that people would be thinking less about people and the kind of traditional operations thing and more about technology, automation, how they can take out more of the menial stuff, all that kind of thing that everybody's like talking about at the moment.

So does the COO role become more of a kind of a COO CIO hybrid?

Like I think sometimes see that some industry, I mean obviously you've got a X CIO as a CEO, so that kind of.

Well, I think it could.

And, and you're right, a lot of, kind of the automation piece that plays fantastically into the operations side of things and AI that will definitely help streamline some of our processes.

So yes, possibly, possibly it does become more of a kind of hybrid role.

COO has always been almost like a collector of lost things though, isn't it?

It's the cost center rather than the profit center side of things.

And I think it's, it's different in all organizations what that COO is responsible for.

But yeah, possibly.

I personally think CIO needs to be at the exec table as well, though.

I completely agree with that.

So direct into CEO, I think especially going forward you need to have either a CIO or CTO type role because technology is going to be, is not going to be.

It already is a pillar of everything you do.

So I think it needs to be at that board level.

Yeah.

So often it kind of has a step away from that.

So I think probably my next role would be more board level CIO role.

Yeah, I think I completely agree.

I mean it's almost, I mean that's one thing where insurance really hasn't quite caught up with that.

You do.

So you mean you still.

It's a variety but you do see a lot of CIOs that still report into a COO.

And like with technology the way it is at the moment, certainly how it's evolved just in the last 12 months and like the pace of change really with, with data and stuff like that over the next, over the next couple of years, like it's, it's hard to believe.

I mean technology must be one of the main topics of conversation around every boardroom table.

Like so, so to have not have the person leading that in, in around that table, it seems, seems crazy.

I just don't, I mean I can't see that being the case in, in fast forward three or four years time.

I just can't see how you could operate certainly if you're taking that kind of stuff seriously.

Yeah.

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

I wanted to kind of evolve it into talking a little bit about the kind of, the kind of major challenges you've had in your career and what you've kind of learned from them.

Like again, again, trying to, just trying to get into a couple of snippets of advice really.

I mean what, what would you say?

The, the, the kind of, the, the one or two kind of major.

I don't want to focus too much on the bad stuff but, but yeah, but there's normally some good learning from, from some of the, some of the, the things that went wrong is that.

Have there been anything like that?

And what, what did you learn from it?

I.

Well, I think challenges, I think having having kids.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And a career was a, was a challenge.

And I think the, the only advice I have is just get through it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's interesting because you think about at the time it's, it's very difficult to juggle home and, and work life and you think you're, you think you're letting everybody down.

You think you're letting your employer down because you're not 100 focused on them.

You think you're letting your kids down, your husband down.

You think I'm not doing any good, any job.

All I'm doing is just spinning these.

Plates, keeping everything going.

Yeah.

And it's something everyone says at the time and no one believes it.

But time goes so quickly.

And so now my kids are older and they don't need me anymore.

I'm so glad I still have A career that I can kind of still feel relevant because I see that with, with some of my friends who had kids.

Same sort of time as me.

Yeah.

Who now their kids have flown the nest.

It's all.

They're a bit lost.

What am I going to do now?

Yeah.

Whereas I know what I'm going to do.

My husband and I, we've got our kind of next phase of life all, all planned out and mapped out and I couldn't have done it if I didn't go through those really the really hard parts of trying to juggle being a mum and being a full time, full time worker as well.

That was probably biggest personal challenge I have had.

Obviously the problematic projects.

I think probably the one that most springs to mind was a regulatory project that we had at EDF trading.

It was during emir and mifid times where the regulations and we had a deadline.

Otherwise we're going to get fined lots and lots of money from a regulator.

And it was delivering to that deadline.

And I think it was kind of 247 working.

It was, it was intense for everyone on the project and I ended up working so long and so, so hard that I actually ended up with pneumonia and having to go to hospital just after we went live because I was like no, we are going to get this thing live.

And then ended up and missing my.

Missing my kids birthday.

My youngest birthday which was.

That was hard.

Yeah.

And that was a learning.

You know sometimes it's.

You don't, you don't need to do it all yourself.

Yeah.

You know I could have relied on my team a bit more there.

They were completely capable and would have done it perfectly well without me.

I didn't have to work that 247 but I felt I, I needed to just to get that in.

And we got it in.

We were one of the only people to, to get in the data piece to the regulators which was good.

But it was, it wasn't.

It came at a cost and it wouldn't be something I, I would repeat and it's something that I often talk about with, with others who I see do the same.

Yeah.

You know, it's not worth it.

Work will always be there.

Don't kill yourself.

Yeah.

Over something that seems very, very important right now.

Because tell you what, in about a year's time it was.

There'll be another crisis to be dealing with.

Yes.

That will be.

Be forgotten.

I think the other thing that I probably learned was quite early on in my career at the bank and I can't remember what it was, I was trying to change some sort of way of operating or do something different at the team.

And I had lots of the leaders that was presented to us said I think we should do this.

And everyone was kind of, why are you saying that?

What are you talking about?

And the learning was.

I'd not, I'd gone away in my corner, come up with this idea that I think we should do and I was quite passionate about.

Yes, this is, this is the approach we should take.

Took nobody on the journey with me, no one at all.

Okay.

So I hadn't had any pre meets with anyone.

So when everybody got into the room it was like, I don't understand why you, why you're even talking about this.

You know, what's the problem?

Why, why bring it to me?

No, no, we're not going to sign off on this.

Of course we're not.

Right, interesting.

I remember talking to my, my boss.

He wasn't my boss at the time, fetus.

I said, you know, it was a disaster.

Road crash.

He said don't ever let anyone go into the room where you want a decision being made where that decision's not already been made offline.

So you know, this is just a tick box exercise.

Yeah, yeah.

You're just bringing together everyone together and everyone's like, yeah, that sounds like really good idea.

Tick box.

Yeah.

Let's go forward.

Don't introduce something new in a room and expect to get signed off that day.

Yeah, I think I was, that was quite, quite important.

So I try and make sure I bring everyone in on the journey.

Yeah, that's interesting.

I always do that.

It's so, so completely off topic.

I always say if you ever going to arrange an event and you like start a WhatsApp group, so always get like one of those two, two or three people to jump in and say they're in straight away because there's always those people that sit in the background, don't want to make a decision, isn't there?

But I mean I think there's a bit that you mentioned about the having kids and stuff like that.

We haven't really.

It's not necessarily about DNI and stuff like that but you went into an analyst programmer role 20 odd years ago where I would imagine there probably weren't too many females doing that role.

What was that like?

And was there a challenge then and I guess move that onto the kids thing.

Were they.

I mean look, I guess there were that.

You hear lots of stories of people who had kids 20 years ago who, where it Was the, the regulations and people, the support wasn't there.

Like it probably, probably is now.

Like what was that?

Like two things.

So going into the bank there were a couple of other female Alef entrance before me and I think again that was thanks to Fetos because he had two daughters.

Okay.

And I think he tried before DNI was a kind of big thing.

He wanted to show that there is a path for, for women there.

He definitely was fantastic.

A fantastic guy.

He is.

And so there were.

I could see others and I think that was useful coming in.

I think if I came in as a, as an 18 year old and saw no other women there, which actually if I take, if I look away from that, my immediate team, that's what I would have seen.

Yeah.

I think that would have probably put me off and probably made me decide after that year to go often and be a lawyer and go to university.

So I think there was a benefit from having seen others and I think that's very, very important.

Having that kind of visual connection that you aren't so strange that you're kind of really are the only one.

Completely odd one out.

Yeah.

And it was only later on in my career, as I moved out of that, that, that team where inclusion was supported that I then started seeing that, well, I am the only, only woman in the room.

But by that stage I didn't really care.

No.

Yeah, yeah.

It was less, I guess it became.

Less of an issue.

You've got over the barrier.

Yeah.

So that's why I think it's quite important to have very visible female role models.

Yeah.

And yeah, just, just that you can look around the office and see somebody else that might look like you.

This is just diversity in general, whether it's gender, ethnicity or anything.

It's so powerful to see someone else that looks like you.

I think part of the pool of HCC was actually interviewing for Katharine Letzinger.

I'd never interviewed for a woman before.

That was my first interview with a woman which was like decades into my career.

It's nuts.

That should never have been the case.

Was that quite.

I mean it was obviously a big deal, but did it make a difference?

It did, it did make a difference.

And actually so Catherine's just, just retired from TMHCC just at the end of last year and I did reminded her of the interview and she came in, she was a little bit late to the interviews.

I was in her office waiting.

She came in and she had her trainers on.

As we mentioned off screen.

I've got my trainers on today because I was hoping that the camera will be cut so you can't see my trainers.

But she had her trainers on.

She said, I've just got to change my trainers and put on my heels.

And I was like, in my mind, I was like, that's just so normal and that's what I do.

And it's so nice to see another woman doing this.

Such a simple thing.

It's just so simple.

But it was something.

I'm like, now I can, I can fit in here, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's amazing how like such a.

I mean, you're so, so right.

I was funny enough, someone told me a story.

It's very similar about how someone interviewed them and walked it and fell over or like kind of tripped over a chair and swore or something.

And they were like, that's kind of what I would have done.

And it's funny how the whole hour long interview, that's the one thing that kind of sticks.

That, that kind of is the bit that makes you.

It makes it familiar, makes it real, doesn't it?

It's like that they're the bits that people cling on to.

I mean, do you think that.

How do you think insurance is.

Is kind of as an industry, from what you've seen over the last few years, how do you think they're doing on the.

Kind of.

Certainly on the, on the, on the, the women front, how do you think they're.

They're doing?

Trying.

I think that.

I think the, the desire is there, but I think insurance is a difficult industry to attract anyone.

Yeah.

Let alone doesn't do a very good.

Job of selling itself.

It doesn't.

No.

And I, I'm not.

I think we should do better, actually, because it is, it is quite an exciting.

It's a.

It's a good industry to work.

There's loads of good as well.

And that's the thing.

It does.

If you didn't have insurance, you wouldn't have all of the great companies that we have, we wouldn't have the events that we have, we wouldn't have innovations because you need someone holding that risk back in you.

Yeah, it is super exciting.

You know, some of the things that we tell some of our grads or when we get interns in is about ensuring people like footballers legs and things like that, because that gets them excited.

It is an interesting industry to get to, but it's very difficult for us to sell ourselves.

And actually, I think with the increased focus of.

On diversity and inclusion, I think insurance is at Risk of missing out because everybody's doing it now.

You know, everyone's trying to target a diverse workforce.

So why would you necessarily want to come into insurance when you've got big tech companies or big banks or big retail or big pharma companies also trying to attract that exact same talent?

Yeah.

So I think insurance has to do a better job of selling itself to everyone and they will then by nature attract more women.

Yeah.

I think it slightly different though.

I think we're doing a terrible job.

Really?

Yeah.

Not tmhc, but as a, but just in general as a nation.

In what sense?

I think we prevent women from ever considering it as a career because of the way it's taught in, in schools and the focus, the focus on things that are really not going to interest anybody to go into.

I remember my son took GCSE computer science, remember, helping him with his revision.

And this was kind of four years ago, so maybe it's, maybe it's changed, maybe it hasn't.

Probably hasn't.

No.

But one of the things he had to learn were all the regulations like the Computer Misuse act and GDPR and all the dates of it.

I'm like, this isn't computer science.

Yeah, yeah.

This is compliance.

Absolutely.

Apologies to all the compliance people out there.

Yeah, but you mean it's fine if you want to do compliance, but it's.

Not going to be fine.

But it's not going to get people interested in computer science.

And we don't put that focus on there.

We don't, we don't attract good teachers into the industry because of the salary of some of my kind of early years.

A new intake career is kind of on par with a fully qualified teacher that's been working for a couple of years.

You're never going to get somebody teaching computer science unless they are older, been in the industry and then coming back into work for the good of the community.

But how many of those.

Yeah, it's a handful, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

Neither of my sons had computer science teachers.

They all had another teacher that picked it up as a, as a kind of side gig.

So again, it was.

There's no passion there.

Yeah.

And I think girls particularly want good role models.

They want to be excited, they want to be interested.

Yeah.

In, in a subject.

They need to have good teachers, otherwise it's just gonna, gonna turn them off, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, everyone remembers.

That's good.

Everyone remembers the best teacher they have, don't they?

Like, you know, I think it's a common Thing.

But I mean I can resonate so much that I did a marketing and business degree and one of the modules I did was entrepreneurship.

And I always remember I'd started a couple of like small businesses by that point.

Just kind of make, make money when I was young and the guy who taught entrepreneurship had never started a business and never run anything.

I was just like, well what does this guy know?

Like why am I going to listen to him?

I feel like I've probably got more, more experience of actually just doing that.

And I'm 22 years old, so yeah, I can, I mean it's a tough one because like you say how, how do, into teaching and that kind of thing if, if they're, if they're in industry, a lot of the great people are in industry.

I just wonder whether that industry has a bigger role to play.

Yeah, I think you're probably right in.

Helping schools and you know, maybe we don't have to teach computer science.

Maybe we just need leaders from, from industry to help schools, you know, adopt computer science across the whole of the curriculum.

It doesn't have to be its own separate.

I never studied computer science.

That's a lie.

I did because I did my open university degree in my own part time.

Yeah, but you didn't get into it.

Yeah, I didn't get into it in that way.

But even what I, what I studied, I got, I, I studied it to get the degree.

The information that I learned really wasn't that helpful to what I did in my day job.

It was much more helpful just to get in and, and do the job.

So maybe focusing on maths or even focusing on English because you know, business analysis is a big part of it as well.

History also make, History students also make very good IT people.

Music students also make very good IT people.

So there's a lot of things that we could maybe focus on but just introduce computer science across the spectrum rather than as its own separate geeky little thing that only the geeks don't.

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean, I think, I think that you can see it evolving into the set.

I mean certainly my daughter's very interested in computers.

I don't, I don't really know why.

I think she probably sees me on it a lot and then, and then kind of wants to play around with it.

But it will come a lot from like, you mean, I think a lot of that gets learned at home now, isn't it?

Like and again with AI and stuff like where that's at in kind of, that may solve some of the, some of the problems.

But how old's your daughter?

She's nearly five.

So she's really young.

And to be fair, her school are actually that they get them using computers and stuff like that quite early on.

Like how that evolves, I don't know.

She's only six months into school.

Yeah.

It'll be interesting to see.

So I think primary schools actually do a better job of it and again possibly because they're not focused on trying to segment it into a.

This is a computer.

Everyday stuff.

Yeah.

It's just something that they do all the time.

Yeah.

So I think that's, I think primary schools are better.

I think it's where it hits secondary schools, where the challenge comes.

The other thing with our schooling system is you have to narrow down your options very, very young, very, very early.

They don't know they're not going to take computer science because they've got to learn all about compliance.

So it just puts them off way too early.

And then you don't get people coming in into the industry because you've kind of cut that off at the root, you know, at the roots.

So you haven't got that, that flow into.

I think India has done a good job in getting a lot more focus.

It's a cultural thing though because engineering has been seen as a very prestigious career for women as well.

Yeah.

So middle class Indian families want their daughters to go into engineering for that, for the independence that they get.

We don't really have that drive here.

I don't think.

I don't think if you, you speak to a lot of English parents that will, you know, you keen for your daughter to go and become an engineer.

I don't think there's that drive from, from parents.

I don't think I had no, I.

Think lots of people wouldn't.

I mean, I think maybe that evolves though like over the next, like.

Because I mean I certainly would, I'd love my daughter to get into something that was, was technology related.

Just that I, you know, although I'm not a technologist, I, I obviously work in that space and from a future proofing perspective it has to be the way forward.

Right.

So I guess what just kind of talking, just very briefly about kind of where from a tech perspective where insurance is going and, and kind of, I mean we, we've, we've kind of touched on AI a little bit and I'm with you in the sense that it is literally kind of everything talks about.

Yeah, yeah, talking about.

Yeah, I saw that yesterday.

Like AI can kind of like identify when someone's having a stroke and cure.

Them potholes as well there.

Which was.

Yeah, it was kind of like watching my dad talk about AI yesterday.

But from a kind of what do you think's big for certain, not necessarily directly on your agenda, but on the industry's agenda over the next kind of year or two.

What do you think are going to be the kind of key thing?

It's similar to kind of our agenda as well.

It's the transformation of the legacy systems.

We need to move away from legacy systems and we are at the hard end of finally getting our new platforms in.

I think that's going to be a focus for a lot of social insurance providers.

They need to move on to the new technology because the old technology is not going to be fit for purpose for any of the new things.

It's not going to work with.

Get us on the blueprint.

Two initiatives going forward if they ever go forward.

Fingers crossed they will because it's a good initiative.

It's just got to get it done.

It's not going to be suitable for AI because the data quality is not going to be there to take advantage.

So I think there is still that push for transforming legacy systems that will persist for the next few years is that we've got to build those foundations first before we can take advantage of some of the new technology.

Because AI is only as good as the data that feeds it it.

And if your data is coming from poor legacy systems with all sorts of data quality issues, you're kind of screwed.

You're not gonna, you're not going to get out of AI what you expect to get out of it.

It's not a silver bullet.

Yeah, a lot of people come and sell you that it is.

But I've had this throughout my whole career being in data, you know, BI and machine learning and you've got quite.

A unique take on it.

Probably not unique, but we've got a, you're in a, in a kind of privileged position that you've come from that data background.

So, so it's not completely alien to you and you probably heard some of the, some of the, the conversations about this kind of stuff's been going on for a while.

Right.

But now it just seems to be slap bang in the middle of, of everyone's conversation for the last 12, 18 months for sure.

And the other focus is going to be on the data side.

Yeah, getting quality, quality data is going to be absolutely essential.

But I feel kind of everyone's going to say that.

Because, because, because it's true.

Yeah.

You know, that's, that is really what we got to focus on is that is the quality of our, our data in our systems so that we can use it effectively.

Yeah.

And AI is, is here.

Yeah.

And I think although it's not silver bullet and it can't fix your potholes and it can't cure a stroke.

Yeah.

It can make your life more efficient.

Yeah.

So I use chat GPT regularly just to, just to help kind of create documents, you know, with some of the job specs or you know, the sort of opportunities like you're trying to think of how to say something.

Yeah.

And you just say to, this is what I mean.

Please make it sound like I know what I'm talking about.

And then it will pump something out so it can be used on a.

Right now summarizing meeting minutes from teams transcripts.

Fantastic.

All of these are, are really beneficial quick wins that we can get from AI and then you do get the kind of, the longer term things like being able to ingest unstructured data and be able to pick out words from things.

But again that's only good if you've got somewhere to put that data and you can start to use it.

Well, it's really, it pumps out a hell of a lot of data so you make sure you kind of do good, decent stuff with it.

I mean I, I'm totally, I mean I've started using one of those kind of AI meetings, note taker on teams and stuff like that and it's unbelievably accurate.

Yeah, it's so good.

And yeah, my business partner uses it for.

He's dyslexic so he kind of sense checks emails and stuff like that and it's a game changer for him because I mean, I think the most important thing for people now is certainly if you're not in technology, it's just to embrace it and start using it because you don't want to be that person who can't use technology.

I've always said to myself like I don't want to be kind of like my parents because they kind of missed the wave and therefore they kind of don't know how to print something.

And like you've got to kind of keep, you've got to keep, at least keep up with the technique, with where it's going because it's moving at such a rate.

If you don't, you're going to get left behind.

And I always knew that this would take on because my Kids started using it immediately.

Yeah.

There was no kind of learning curve.

There was no like push for AI.

They just started to use it instead of Google.

Totally easy.

Just, just even kind of.

My, my youngest would use it for spell checking.

How do you spell this word?

How do you.

It was so much more efficient than a Google search.

They don't use Google anymore.

They just search everything.

It's a massive risk to their business, isn't it?

I think about that the other day.

Yeah, yeah.

But it's, it's interesting because there is a kind of downside of it all as well because AI can only learn based on what has happened.

Yeah.

So innovation, new thinking.

Is that going to be stifled because we're always going to be relying on than what ChatGPT tells us will only be based on the past.

And some of that past isn't true.

Yeah.

You know, or not.

And not good.

Yeah.

And not good.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean that's the whole concept really.

We learned from what was what we did wrong in the past.

But.

So that is my only worry.

I think about using it too much, but I use it on a daily basis.

Yeah, yeah.

It just makes life.

Especially if I'm kind of typing an email, writing as a Word document and it's this sounds like a five year old's written it.

Can you make it sound like a CIO's written it, please?

Thank you very much.

Right, cool.

Well, look, we're coming to the end.

I always do some quick fire questions right at the end, so I'm going to fire a few at you.

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

Difficult one, but I think the Raspberry PI Foundation.

Okay, tell me about that.

I've never heard of them.

What?

Never heard of.

Never heard of Raspberry PI.

Oh my God.

Is my life going to be enlightened from this?

It absolutely should do.

So they had an initiative to.

To build a very, very tiny, tiny, tiny little computer.

Okay.

At a very, very low cost.

So kind of $5.

Right.

And it was to commoditize, really technology.

So give it to, to people that couldn't afford it.

Kind of.

They wanted to sell it into or not sell it even actually.

So open source, provide it into schools.

And it was to get everyone into technology and not have a barrier of price.

So they came at it from a good idea and initiative and a good social concept to create this tiny, tiny microcomputer that now is used everywhere.

I've got a Raspberry PI server running My Hue Lights system at home, it's fantastic.

But they were able to take that and then they sold it into industry and they made loads of money off of something that has a good moral thing, you know, it's hard.

I think, I think that's a fantastic thing.

It's not, it's not someone's found an opportunity in the market to make money.

It's.

They found a gap to commoditize it and then they've happened to make a lot of money on the back.

Yeah, yeah.

So it came from a really good place.

I need to look that up.

What's the one piece of advice you wish that your kind of younger self or kind of you were given when you were first starting out?

It's okay to ask for help.

Okay.

I, I think, I don't think people.

Are worried about asking because they're looking like they don't know what they're doing.

Like they don't know what they're doing.

And actually, especially in, in your early career.

Yeah.

You have no clue.

Everyone knows you have no clue.

You know, nobody expects you to know everything.

It's okay to ask for help and not try and work it all out yourself.

Yeah.

You know, asking for help has other benefits because you make connections, people like to help people.

You know, it just, it creates a bond then.

Yeah, you know, it's not a burden to ask for help.

I think I would have liked to have told myself, it's okay, you don't have to do it all yourself.

Don't.

Don't be expected to know everything.

It's fine.

Yeah, it's always a weird one, isn't it?

It's not until you do know a lot that you realize you don't need to actually know as much as what you're doing.

You can ask questions.

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

I actually think I'd like to swap jobs with somebody new into my IT department to see what it's really like because I'm sure that I get.

See it through their eyes, see what their experience is really like.

I would be quite keen to do that.

Yeah, good.

Best kind of non fictional business, kind of related book you've ever read.

I am a prolific reader, so I read an awful lot.

In fact, my leadership team, their big fear is when we have a little bit, bit of a break over Christmas, what's Nikki going to read and come back and make us all do, which is what happens very frequently.

I need to lean on You.

My New Year's resolution was to read 12 books this year, which is a big undertake one a month for me.

Is big.

Is good going?

Oh no, I love reading.

Kind of on track so far, but excellent.

I'm only two weeks in, so.

Good.

So halfway through a book.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, about that.

Excellent.

So I think if I had to pick one, it.

It's a book called what Got yout Here Won't get you There.

Okay.

It's about some of the things that have made you successful up to a point in your career actually need to change to make you successful going forward.

Okay.

So for example, you might have been the best developer and your expertise is creating all of this fantastic code and you've got real skills in, in developing.

That's a fantastic skill.

But that will only get you to be the best developer if you want to go further.

You need to learn new skills and new.

You need to break some of the habits you've got into in the past to learn new things for the future.

And actually it's a book I read just before I came to TMHCC and it was.

I think it, it was very valuable in what then happens.

Yeah, yeah.

Next in my career.

Yeah.

Okay.

I'll definitely have to check that out.

That's probably quite relevant for me right now as well.

What's the best career decision you ever made joining tmhcc?

Yeah, yeah.

What?

Why?

Just it was a fantastic opportunity, fantastic timing and I was able to get the CIO role.

Yeah, yeah.

I think definitely the best decision.

Amazing.

If there was one person that kind of you'd say you'd admire most or role model, who would that be?

I'll have to pick two.

And it's gonna be my boys.

Great.

That's good.

My two sons.

So they're both very successful judo athletes, national medal winners.

My youngest is on the England judo squad at the moment.

So is that for like Olympics and that kind of thing?

Potentially, if he decides to go down that route.

And I just, I admire so much their resilience when, you know, getting going onto the mat in front of all of these people.

Yeah.

And, and competing.

It's just.

I'm in awe.

I mean, awe every time I watch them.

It's amazing.

It's fantastic.

Did they get into that when they were really young?

7 and 9 and that was just.

It was, it was.

I needed a half term event and there was a free judo session for a half term.

So he said, boys, guess what?

You're doing this.

But they absolutely Loved it.

And then it kind of took on from there.

But yeah, I just admire so much their strength and resilience because.

Especially through losing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, because only one person could win a judo contest and it's.

How do you, how do you pick yourself up and with dignity shake the other person.

Good life skills from that.

Proud of.

I'm so proud of, of them doing that.

I could never have done that.

No.

I think it's amazing.

That's amazing.

And then the last question is, what is the, the best thing about working in insurance?

People.

Okay.

Definitely the people.

You touched on that a little bit earlier as well, but like the community and all that kind of stuff.

Stuff.

Yeah, I like it.

Yeah.

What a great way to finish.

Well, look, thank you so much for, for your time.

Really, really appreciate it.

I know things are busy early January and stuff, but it's been great to have you on.

Look, there's plenty more episodes to come, guys, so, so keep listening, like subscribe all the usual stuff and, and myself and Nikki will see you soon.

If people want to reach out and get in touch links in.

Yep.

Just don't try and sell me stuff.

Yeah, good stuff.

Stuff.

Thanks.

Thanks for coming on and we'll catch everyone soon.

Brilliant.

Thank you.

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

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