Chris Hanks, Former CII President: Lessons from 50 Years in Insurance

Speaker A: Welcome on into Empower Talks. This is a podcast where we talk about careers with people across the insurance industry. I'm super excited to share today's conversation with you where we invite Chris Hanks in to Empower Talks. Chris Hanks has had an incredibly influential career where he's been general manager at Allianz Commercial, a non exec director at, uh, lots of familiar insurance brands and also president of the cii. From the moment I met Chris, most of our conversations have evolved around learning and development. He takes a real interest in how we help people develop their insurance knowledge and retain talent in the industry, which is really at the heart of the conversation that we're having today. And Chris has an incredible story of how he entered the insurance market and worked his way up to those senior roles. He's incredibly transparent and open in this conversation, which makes it a particularly heartwarming episode. So welcome on in to Empower Talks. Hi, Chris, it's great to see you. Um, there's going to be lots of people who know you in different places, different parts of experience across the market, potentially through roles that you've had in the commercial aspect, but also through work with the CII maybe as well. So do you want to just give us a little bit of a roundup of what you've done throughout your insurance career?

Speaker B: I started with a British mutual, nationally Employers Mutual, back in 1970 and since then I started as an underwriter. I didn't know what to do as a career, but as soon as I got into insurance with an underwriter, I liked it. I liked the challenge of thinking about decisions. So I stayed as an underwriter and then moved on through. And whilst I started as a commercial underwriter, I eventually found myself in personal lines for a while, which was a very different game. Then I found myself back in commercial lines and into general management and finished up running Allianz commercial business in the uk. And then when I retired, I turned to the non exec world, which I thought was a sort of odd place to go, but I have to say, brilliant. I loved it, I loved it, I loved it. You could actually get involved in so many different things. And after I left, after retired from Allianz, I say I went into lawyers and London market, which was a completely different game. So personal lines UK commercial lines, specialty business in Lloyds and during that time I've worked for a British company, a mutual. I've worked for an American company, a French company, a, a German company and a British company. It used to be a bit of a wealth of Experience and tasted different experiences along the way.

Speaker A: So if I was Talking to the 25 year old you, do you remember him?

Speaker B: Yes, a long time ago.

Speaker A: And I said one day you are going to be running Allianz. What would he have said?

Speaker B: Well uh, firstly you're mad, mad because I uh, you know, that wasn't an aspiration, it wasn't gold. I didn't have a goal when I started my career. I say I didn't know what to do and couriers officers tossed a coin and said we're banking our insurance. And I went into insurance and they offered me a uh, job before my A level results were known. That's good. So I started insurance and I loved it. At uh, 25, I probably was energetic, working hard. I was just about becoming a supervisor for a small team and then the notion that I could one day manage a big business way off the agenda. I could probably manage a team and I was um, unsure then what that career path would take. I had no idea. If you'd asked me at 40, I still had no idea. I know I wanted to be in insurance because the great thing about, I found about insurance is you can start at any level with or without qualifications. And if you apply yourself, you take the knowledge, you take the experience and take the opportunity to come your way, you can get to the most senior levels in this industry and at any stage you can get off that roundabout and say, good, I've done enough, I've done enough. Or you can carry on building your career, you know, right to the very top of organizations.

Speaker A: So you say when you were 40 you still weren't thinking like that. So can you talk us through you as a professional between when you started and when you were 40? How would your colleagues have described you at that point?

Speaker B: Bit gobby, bit pushy. Not necessarily for my own career development, but just pushy about things. I had quite an inquisitive mind. I think that comes from the fact that my secondary school education, I uh, wasn't happy. I'd come from the poorer part of town and all these posh kids didn't like those. So I didn't feel comfortable. So Those years from 11 to uh, 17 weren't years where I was reusing my brain power at all. I was getting through it. So I think as soon as I got out of school I think the thirst for knowledge getting on became quite strong almost to the extent that it was, I show those buggers that I can get on because I didn't feel they valued me as much as I could have done. And in fact, that's the theme that goes right throughout my career. I wish someone had told me that I could be good. I didn't know I could be good. In fact, I didn't know I could be good until I was probably mid to late 50s. That's when I finally realized, actually, I can be good. That probably lies behind my attitude to work, that it's work hard work, hard work hard, proof, proof, proof. And someone should have told me many years ago, I should have listened. You don't have to apply yourself like that all the time. You just have to be smarter about it. Um, and that's one of the reasons why I think now I'm very keen on developing younger people because they need to be made aware that actually they've got skills, talent and capabilities they probably don't know they've got helping them nurture that will help them in their career path, if that's what they want.

Speaker A: What do you think prevented you hearing from people that, uh, you could do bigger things?

Speaker B: Maybe I was deaf to it because I suspect, in fact, I know now, looking back, that there were people who identified me as someone that could get on because I had opportunities. I had opportunities that other people didn't have, but I wasn't aware of it. There wasn't an open conversation. One thing sticks in my mind you also about the early career because I was energetic, I was getting on, I had a thirst for knowledge. I was, I was good as, uh, the team leader. You know, when I was very young, I was in a boyish brigade, I was a captain of the football team. So until I went to secondary school, I was a sort of leader of many things. Secondary school sort of threw me a little bit because there was all these posh kids that, uh, didn't value that. So when I got in the workplace, I started become a leader. I volunteered for the staff council, I volunteered for things I wanted to be involved. When I got to probably in the late 20s, early 30s, people in that company I was in, which was a British mutual, probably saw me as, someone's going to get on, he's going to get on. In fact, it could stay where we had a regional business and the region where I was based was the biggest region. And I was just working in there and then the manager was going to move on. And if you had asked almost anybody in the company who was going to get that job, it was me. This is the job that gave me a BMW. This was the job at that time in my level of career that I was, um, shoeing, and the CEO called to see me. Here we go. This is it. And he said, XYZ is about to move on. And we got the regional manager's job in this big region, and I'm going to give it to xyz. Deafness in the ears. Didn't hear the rest of the conversation. I can't believe it. This was my job. So I went out and he said, come back and see me a couple of days time. So I went out and I thought, this is ridiculous. I hadn't planned a career, but actually things had opened up and, um, this was going to be my job. So bruised ego, um, thought, I've got to leave to an artist place. So I went back to see him two or three days later and said, what did you think about the offer? And I hadn't heard because I was so cheesed off. I hadn't heard the rest of the conversation. What you actually said was, actually, this job's coming up. It's regional manager's job. Uh, good job, and you're the best boy in the company for this. You know, this, this is the job you could do and do it well. But I've got other people that could do the regional manager's job. Maybe not as good as you, but other people. But I've got this job over here that only you can do. I want you to start a new unit. I want you to build it. I want you to go in this sphere of business. We're not represented because I see a lot of growth potential and you have a chance to pick the people for your team and build a separate unit. I didn't hear that. He had actually spotted things in me that maybe I'd not seen myself. And that was the making of my career, because I got the unit and it was a good unit. It was a different unit. It made a lot of noise. We were at the conference presentation, standing up there. Not the regional manager that just ran good, uh, region, but this was different. And then from there, I went on and became assistant to the general manager. So I carried his bags for a while. I got involved in lots of different projects. I got my name in the marketplace. We started doing personal lines in a big way, which took me into a whole different area. My career until then had been in commercial lines. I was then in personal lines area. Very different marketplace. And then, you know, as it goes on, became very successful. And eventually I got the assistant general manager's job. So I was actually sitting at the executive table. And then we had a takeover and one of the few people that stayed, I, uh, was there and I got a bigger job and all of a sudden my career took off. So, although I didn't recognize it at the time, bitterly disappointed, actually, he had seen something in me that I hadn't seen myself. And that stayed with me, not just for me, but for all the other people I've worked with. There's some talent and skills and capability in people that they may not see themselves, may not even recognise, but if you can unleash that, they become more and better than they were, although I thought they could be. Now, it's not true of everybody. There are some bullshitters around that will tell you, but most people need some encouragement to get their very best out of them.

Speaker A: How old were you when that conversation took place?

Speaker B: Uh, I was probably early 30s.

Speaker A: And you said about you've been working hard and you learned that you needed to work smart.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: What's the difference?

Speaker B: There is no substitute for hard work. I do worry. We have lost a lot of the effort that people should be putting into work to learn, to build relationships, to do all the things that you need to know. I can't not work from home, etc. But you know, you need to be in with team building work all the time, doing things to make the business a little bit better tomorrow than it is today. Little increments. And that only comes from applying yourself and working hard. So because I didn't believe I was any good, I made up that from work. But it did send a message to me eventually that actually it's not all about hard work. It is about how you use your time. By all means, spend the hours, but use that time a bit better. And as you go up the ladder, uh, I find more and more time is spent with people, on people. Now when I was leading big business, people say what you spend your time on, what you do all day long, you know, and I would say 50, maybe 60% of my time is people, not big business deals. It's not analyzing results, you know, 10% of the time analyze the results. 50, 60% is on people. Getting people to do the things that they can do. Square pegs in square holes rather than square pegs in round holes. Making sure that the next generation, the next move in the business has got the right people with the right skills. And I think working smarter is about how you use your time with your people. Most people want to be led, they want to feel trusted, valued, they want to be told they're doing well. They Want to be helped. You know, they're not chasing no dream that's not impossible to achieve. It's getting the trust of the people. And if there's one lesson I've probably picked up, it's build your teams, build people around you because you can't do everything yourself. And I go back to my boys brigade days and the football team, you know, football teams are all about teamwork. Business is all about teamwork. And no matter how successful you come, if you don't have your right team stuffed.

Speaker A: So if you go back to that 25 year old you, what types of things were you focusing on that were working hard and what were you maybe passing by as opportunities that might have been smarter?

Speaker B: I like the technical side of business. I didn't like the selling side. I like to be in the team, I like being with people and I like the technical side. So a lot of my time was spent on sad really, the technical side of business. But actually I would say that's the base point, that's my apprenticeship. Those years, my 20s were the time I built the knowledge of what technical insurance is all about. And that knowledge became the base point for my career. Even when you are the most senior executive, if you don't understand insurance, if you don't understand risk, you're at a great disadvantage even as the most senior executive, the ability to ask a detailed question about a particular part of your business. If you get an answer that you're not sure about, you ask another one and then you really know if your people know what you're talking about. And having that depth of understanding to be able to ask the right question, couldn't ask loads of questions. Because as your career moves on, you forget about many and many of the details, the minute details. But knowing enough to ask the right question, to see whether your people, uh, people you've entrusted to run your business, the day that they're running your business, know what they're talking about and they're not bullshitting you. That's a very, very key skill. And I think that came from the hard work in my twenties about the very basics of insurance.

Speaker A: And the switch.

Speaker B: The switch was probably understanding that you could use power and influence in a different way both to grow your business and grow your people. Because it comes at this point that most people don't know how good they could be. Take the bullshit aside. Most people, and it's, it's particularly true of the females. It's one of the reasons that we were so slow in insurance and bringing our females through you ask a 25 year old male whether they can do the job. Oh yeah, no problem. You ask a 25 year old female whether they could do the job. And going back it was, well, I'm not sure yet. Just the very nature of them and getting them to flourish younger I think was one of the keys to addressing that imbalance in our industry. Our industry is unrecognizable in the gender balance than it was even 20 or 30 years ago. It's taken a long, long time, but it's unrecognizable. And I think that switch was realizing that you could use your knowledge, your power, your influence to get the very best out of your people. And if your people are good and they're becoming better every day, you will be your competition because your competition aren't as focused on that as yourself. And I would say that when I got my job running Allianz, um, commercial, that was the big difference between us and our competitors is that, uh, our team all together, all trying to be better tomorrow than they were yesterday and better the next day than they were today. Every day, just that, ah, little increment change. Big, big difference between us and our competitors. And we move that business from, I think we were the 12th largest commercial insurer turning over about 200 million in those eight or nine years to the second or third largest commercial insurer turning over 1.2 billion.

Speaker A: So you talk about the kind of influence navigation of people. So we often hear that term, um, office politics. And I often find that whenever anyone uses the term office politics, it comes with a negative connotation. So it's not something we want to get involved in. It involves maybe game playing or manipulation. But actually when we're in a corporate world, all we're doing is making decisions and all decisions are going to be people coming together and influencing each other. Therefore, if we stay away from office politics, we're almost out of the conversation. And um, particularly if you feel like you don't quite like the way that's going or the integrity around it, if you're not in the conversation, you're almost allowing that to kind of take place. What that kind of fit with some

Speaker B: of your learnings in any team game and uh, work at the team game. How can you contemplate going into a football match or a rugby match or a hockey match without a plan, without tactics, without some understanding of what the game plan is? And positioning yourself and your players and your skills in the right place is exactly the same at work. You've got to get the right players in the right meetings. For me, I like them, um, I like. I position myself in the right place for that sort of meeting. Sometimes at the head of the table, but more often in the middle of the table. You've got to see the body language. You've got to see where people are shifting in their seat or whether they're trying to avoid eye contact or trying to. You just have to have an understanding of that. You can't sit there blindly just letting things happen around you. You position and maneuver, uh, meetings for the things you want to achieve out of it because there'll be people in the room doing exactly the same. That's not just internal. That's with your competitors, that's with your customers, that's with your, your brokers. And every meeting is a bit of a battle. Good battles doesn't have to be nasty or aggressive, but you need to understand the rules of the game.

Speaker A: How did you learn those skills?

Speaker B: I probably got some inherent manipulative skills. Anyway, you know, you can't become a leader, boys brigade football team without having some of those skills in. You parking naturally. And then you sit in meetings or any sort of discussion and you don't get result. You don't like what's happening, and you see, well, how did that happen? So you then learn how to do things so that things you get, you more often get the result you want. Not that it's all going to be done for you. The result you want might be the team. We've got to discuss and decide what we do. Because there's a great power. Some people come up with so much better ideas than I do. And if you select your team properly, you've got people that challenge you. I always had someone, always had someone in my team that would come in to my office, close the door, say, chris, you're big. Stop it, stop it. You're stupid. Forget it. So that grounds you, and that comes from having people around your table who have got different views. So that in those meetings, you know who's going to have some different views and where they're coming from. Because you've thought about it beforehand, you've positioned yourself for it. Generally, the result is better when more minds share a, uh, problem to be solved than the arrogant boss.

Speaker A: I've noticed with myself, I've had this habit, which I think kind of relates to what you're saying now, where if I see someone doing something really well or what I think might not be so well, then I always end up in this conversation in My head of being like what was it they were doing? So it might be where were they sitting or did they make themselves a drink and not offer somebody else or all these subtle things that kind of meant that sometimes the room can end up going against you and it's kind of walking out of a room and not just thinking about what's on my list, but almost deconstructing all of the different dynamics that have gone on to learn and then sort of build in things that I liked.

Speaker B: Absolutely. You know, and these things don't happen by accident. If people go into meetings or any sort of conversation thinking they're going to either enjoy it or get out of it what they want or get the right result without some pre planning, pre thoughting or sorting out a few things, it ain't gonna happen. Things will only happen if there's some sort of plan or something. The corollary is, is very easy for you yet then to be dominant, aggressive, argumentative, particularly if you don't start getting the things that you want. And I would think on the some occasions when on reflection, I shouldn't have done that, shouldn't have been like that. I think some people in our meetings, if I talk about Alianz commercial, if I think of our executive meetings there, I think some people would say this was uncomfortable, challenging because we're trying to be better today than we were yesterday and want to be better tomorrow. And that's then very, very important to get the team on your side because you can't be better unless you're challenging all the time. And it's uncomfortable. I can remember people saying to me, it's relentless, it never stops, never stop. Well, actually if you want to be top of the world that you know, that's what you do, you ain't going to win the 800 meters of the Olympics unless you, you know. I remember one presentation from Kelly Holmes and she won two gold medals. Slightly unexpectedly, she had not been training well and she said something like I don't know where it was in the last, I don't know the last three years whether it was a trainer, whether it's my training, was it my diet, don't know what it was. But something gave me that 1/100th of a second that made the difference between me winning and losing, not winning and coming second, not winning or coming second and doing a good job or beating the first off, but winning and losing 1/100th of a second something in those three years in prep minute margin and actually in business, it is no different One of the things that my boss in commercial said, we're going to eat inflation. So for five years we ate, uh, inflation. Now inflation was only 2 or 3%, but every year we had to be 2 or 3% better than we were, uh, the previous year. Now over five years, because we started to give pay rises, we had to change our business in some small way so inflation, we didn't have to put our price up for inflation over five years. That gave us a 15, 16, 17 point advantage over our competitors who hadn't been eating inflation, who had been spending their money. Now that becomes in a huge margin that you can use for investment, doing some deals a bit closer to the wire. Very, very good. And that's one other lesson I've learned in life is do things all the time to make your business better. Small incremental steps. Not every three or four years have a big redundancy program to shave costs. Because what those programs do unhinges, um, the rest of the team. Not that most of the team are made redundant, but they live in fear, saying, next time it could be me. So if every year you're nibbling at the infrastructure, you're not frightening your team, your team start to trust you. And trust goes an awful long way. If people trust you, if they believe you're being open and honest, if you give them the values that we're working towards, they will give you discretionary effort. And discretionary effort is worth an awful, awful lot. I reckon in our best year we were getting something like discretionary effort, 10% for people. Now, some people would never give it, some would give 30, 40% work, all else God send. But on balance, I RECKON we got 10% discretionary effort. So we got a thousand people, 1200 people. That's worth 120 people's effort. If you lose that discretionary effort, you've got to hire 120 people. That will ruin your expense ratio. And if you don't tackle that bit by bit, you then end up in a process, I say of every three or four years having a big restructuring, people lose their jobs, people are worried. You take your eye off the ball and people start losing their trust and confidence in you.

Speaker A: So when you're looking at that expense ratio, uh, on a strategic level and you're not able to make the granular decisions, you can't get into that level of detail. How are you able to have that kind of influence? What are the areas of opportunity there?

Speaker B: I would say that comes right back to all your team being on the same Page. There's loads of different ways of managing businesses leading up. Uh, I'll use Allianz commercials as my benchmark because I think everything I've done in my career led up to that point in time. AGF had been taken over by Allianz. AGF was a French naturalized company, privatized, took acting right over by Allianz. And Allianz had a business in the UK which was Corneal. So it was very natural that the AGF business and the Corneal business were pushed together. They were very different businesses, very different cultures. Cornell was a fabulous little business, but got lost its way. As I say, we're about the 10th, 12th, 13th largest commercial insurer. And I did two or three years there. The new CEO joined at the same time as me and I got the opportunity. As he was restructuring, he took over from the retiring guy to play a part in the future. And again, I remember he had a conversation with me and said he was under pressure to take some good up and coming talent from Germany into the business. Okay. He said to me, um, Chris, thanks. You know, great commercial executive marketing, um, and underwriting help turn that business break. I'm, um, going to bring someone in to run the overall commercial business. I said, oh, that's disappointing. You know, I was hoping that would be my opportunity. He said, no, well, I think this would be quite a good fit. And I said, well, thanks, you know, know, that's great, but I probably won't. I'll see the success through, but I probably won't stay. Day three. Three or four days later, uh, we had another conversation. He said, I've been thinking, I think probably like you to run the commercial business. And he put the guy from Germany into a personalized business. And my 30 year previous experience, that was my moment. And then for the next 10 years, not me, we built Alliance Commercial Insert, we would say was the best commercial insurer at that time. And that was all about building the team and capabilities. Because what I'd learned from previous experience is that unless you have good people all doing the right thing, all believing in the same thing, you ain't going to get very far. Conversely, if people come back to the point I made, if people do believe you, if they trust you, if there's that bargaining between the two of you, you can achieve much more than you thought you could have achieved. Now, we were helped by our competitors being much more traditional in reorganizing and changing and losing money because it was a tough marketplace. But it's when it's tough, whether you can take advantage of it. And one of the things I was extremely keen on was creating an eliteness about parts of our business. So I had my key managers around the business and we got 60, 65 of them together each year for a two or three day conference. And we always invited another five or 10 people who hadn't made it yet. Perhaps they're junior, perhaps they're different to join this senior leadership group. And those two or three days together, we generally went somewhere posh, Blenheim, Penny or Park. We splashed the cash, wasn't given a budget for it. I had to leave it from various budgets because if you ask about £800,000 to splash spend on staff entertainment, we always spent the first day doing something. Always an intense business session, always big keynote speeches from key players saying this is how we'd like to behave. Always done with the spirit of this is where we're going. Do you want to come on this journey with us? And you do it one year and the first year. Remember, our theme was Tina Turner simply the best will be the best. Absolutely not. We were pretty rubbish. But it was the start of the journey. You get people starting to believe that they could be best or they could be better. So the journey unfolds, um, and by the time you get to the third year, people are starting to say this is actually our business. So that when they went back to their office in Leeds or Glasgow or Manchester, they're repeating the same words I heard at the conference, hopefully in the same way they heard a conference and people locally believed it. So I could walk into our, um, Glasgow office or our, uh, woken office and it would be the same as going into our Maestone office or our Chancellor's office. There wasn't a split because people get in the same. And that cadre of 60 people became the place where you wanted to be. So it became aspirational. I want to go at the managers conference. I wanted to do something different. Yes. I wanted to become swimming at 7 o' clock in the morning or I actually want to be walking across hot coals. I've never walked across hot coals before. You know, things that made people feel different and special and by including a number of other people that weren't actually in that group, then that became hard to be in that group. So it became something that, you know, the same message to the same organization by something was fun, felt part of the team. And if you ally that with the comments about not doing major change. Yes. Did we have redundancies? Did we sack?

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: We did, but it wasn't wholesale. It was a bit here and a bit there because as soon as you do a wholesale one, everyone feel threatened. The other things we did was concentrate very much on personal development. We wanted not to be the biggest, growing more. We wanted to be the most profitable, we wanted to be the most stable and we wanted to be the most respected. So that means we had to up our game. So at one stage we had to water it down in the end. But the one safer said, no one gets promoted into an underwriting role unless you're ACI qualified. You cannot hold. Oh, my God. There's people who've been in the business 30 years who'd done a few CII exams, now being told they can't get to the next level of underwriting unless they're ACI qualified. So we had 50 year olds dusting off their exam books and start taking their ACI again. That's one of the reasons I became president of the CI, because we became the company that was training and developing its underwriters. Probably you could not get promoted. Now, eventually we run out of people because we couldn't recruit enough people from our competitors who were qualified.

Speaker A: Why do you think that is?

Speaker B: I think we've lost our values of what? Insurance. It became easy to get on insurance. I'm afraid without insurance qualifications, we were never like the architects and lawyer professionals. They're always a bit second rate. And I don't think employers valued it the most. Senior executives. Insurance companies had no relationship with cii. Uh, it's something that happened in people expect, all right, Companies gave some incentives. They get, they pay for your lessons. You didn't have to do it. If you didn't do it, you weren't penalized, you could get on. And that's because insurance is a place of opportunity. You can get on, but I think you can get on better if you have the right training and development. If you have the, the letters after your name, you say, I'm professionally qualified. We started our own, effectively university of people internally. So big emphasis on training now. We spent a lot of money on training. Every underwriter had to do training every year. There was set number of days they had to be training because we wanted people focus on being professional based. All, all those attributes that we're talking about in our presentations, we wanted people to live that message. So people did become. And for a while I think most people would look to Allianz Commercial and said, that's a good place to be. They train you, they've got the right aspirations, they've got the right capabilities, they're helping you become better people. And our customers, our brokers respected us because actually we were quite happy to say no to many things because it didn't fit us. You know, it was a shoddy old bit of business that was a hard fought reputation but it made a big difference I think.

Speaker A: So there'll be people listening to this that may be finishing this uh, and deciding whether or not to go on. M and I tend to see this trend where if you haven't done your ACII and you will generally tell people they don't have to do it. I don't see people that have got their ACII who ever go, it's not really worth it, don't bother. So I kind of feel like there's this reassurance for people who haven't got it to discourage others from doing it. And that has quite a ripple effect, particularly now with younger generations working at home more. So you're not seeing people studying, you're not noticing maybe where other people are going ahead with it. And also like you say, it's not required so often. But uh, I mean I was in HR when I did my ECI and I found it so bad like I wouldn't have done anything I, I've done without it. So to not sort of see that it's worthwhile in a technical role, I can say to your point, I can see that you don't have to, but if you want to show that you're dedicated, that you will work hard, that curious and all those other skills, it's such a great demonstration. It's evidence of that and you're learning relevant things whilst you're doing it. So what would you say to a young person who's sort of in a dilemma or maybe they're not being pushed in the direction to do it, it's kind of up to them, to encourage them to go ahead.

Speaker B: Well, I would to start before I talk to what I'd say to them. I think the industry should change its game plan. I think it should be a mandatory that you have a level of training and competence before you're allowed to do anything. Now I can understand how in a call center, uh, where maybe you're scripted certain things that may be very different to someone who's a professional underwriter or administrator in a technical environment. I can understand how that'd be different. But I do think there is a level at which you shouldn't be allowed to practice in insurance unless you've you're not allowed to be a lawyer. Lots of other professions say this is a minimum level. We require people to be hired. There is no chance of that happening. Insurance part, because many, many people in the most senior levels aren't, um, themselves qualified. And I understand that if you've, if you've done university, if you've done your business, I can understand then saying you've got to be trained in something else. That's a pain, but that's life this day. You should be competent in what you do in a role. So if I had my way, I'd, um, change the game. There is a, and there's probably several levels at which you have to reach a level of competence. Now, many companies have got a level of competency internally, but it's not universal. And I think there's bearing in mind insurance is such a huge part of our economy that it screams that there should be some level of confidence. What I say to the young person, come back to your. Your point is, come on, guys, get real. Do you want to make it in this? You know, what do you want to do for your life? What do you want to career? Why shouldn't you be a professional in your profession? We don't. We rarely talk about insurance being a profession, and maybe it isn't, but, uh, it's, uh, very core for those core roles. It is a profession. Get yourself qualified. No worry about it. You won't get on until you do. Now, I know many companies don't subscribe to that. If you ask me what I'd say, get qualified, then you've got your badge. And unless you do something really naughty, you've got that badge for life. And, um, that's your passport into being a professional in our profession.

Speaker A: Now, when you were talking about that key moment where everything changed, you say in that conversation, and it hit an emotion for you, what's that emotion?

Speaker B: Life is emotional. It's not lots of functional things in life, but if you're really going to get into the heart and soul of people, it is emotion. And that's both in your private life and in your work life. If you're not emotionally attached to something, it becomes functional job. Therefore, your loyalty and, uh, discretionary effort, I think, will be less than if you're emotionally attached. As soon as you become emotionally attached, you generally feel that you're part of an overall team. Therefore, everything you do, even I say this, the filing clerk in a branch office, everything they do has an impact that actually adds to our business. So every pound we make as Profit. Every pound we're able to give out as bonuses comes because that clerk filed that file in the right place and could be found immediately by the next person that needed it right throughout. Uh, every single person in that business adds value somewhere along the line. And if you're doing that, you have an emotional attachment because you care about it, you want to do it well. And if you can get the emotional attachment, come back to it, you give discretionary effort. And if you give a discretionary effort, then actually the benefits, the business benefits. The second thing is you don't generally leave for more money. You don't get cheesed off because you've got some skin in the game. You feel you're part of this. You can't get everyone like that. But if you can get the majority of people feeling you're emotionally attached to the business, that it's their business, that what they do counts, that goes one hell of a long way. Now, uh, it means you don't said you don't have to pay them so much because, uh, they're getting other things, they're getting more fulfillment. They work and walk with a spring in their step. It means when they go home from work, they're not cursing and spitting about work, they're going home feeling they've added some sort of value somewhere along. I overplay it, but that's that general feeling. We won Commercial intro of the Year. Weren't you and Chris Evans presented the price and he said something like, well, fantastic. He said it's all about the team. It's all about bang on, bang on.

Speaker A: What's the emotion for you though? So I'm curious, is it pride of the moment? Is it knowing what was going to come and the fact that at the moment you didn't realize what was coming? Is it a nostalgia of looking back?

Speaker B: I suspect at the time it was partly because, remember, I didn't think I was good enough to do. I suspect it's also leading teams. So I felt this was my team, my family. And if you expect people to invest their emotional time and energy, you've got to do it yourself. So you eat m lift and breathe it. And that, that was my baby. So personal pride, personal satisfaction, probably a bit of arrogance, probably a bit of I showed the buggers, probably a bit of God, done a good job, you know, lots of different things.

Speaker A: So it's like validation, probably.

Speaker B: Validations will probably be a. Because you never know whether you're doing the right thing. You never in total, you know, the dust settles. Whether that was Good or bad. Yeah. And because if you're a person that has doubts, you never know. So, yeah, validation.

Speaker A: Do you relate to imposter syndrome?

Speaker B: I'd never heard of that until last 20, but yeah, I lived it all my life. Ridiculous. Absolutely. BARKING Ridiculous. Why would anyone feel that, uh, they're not good enough to do anything? I said, you can't help it, it's in there. And you don't necessarily think about it consciously. It's only when it comes to decision time, when you, you wimp out decisions. I've never changed employer. I started with a company that was taken over. I went with them. I was clearly redundant at the time because takeover, but I wasn't my redundant with the new company. So NEM was taken over by agf, was taken over by Corneal Corner was taken over by Helios. So, uh, I've wimped out. I've not, I've not changed company now they're very different companies, but I've not actually make that conscious decision to move company. Why? Probably because I thought I weren't good enough. Barking now as it happens, because I was energetic and engaged. Every takeover became an opportunity. Some people got out, some people wallowed, some people were frightened. For me it was a challenge. Get on, prove yourself a game. Never wanted to be the ultimate number one. Always liked to have a boss. Strange. I didn't want to be number one. I want to be the number one in my own little bit of suit. But I didn't want to be number one in the company.

Speaker A: Why?

Speaker B: Probably didn't think I was good enough. BARKING BARKING Is this supposed to be an analysis? Yeah. But those things stay hidden in you. It's only when you look back you realize this was stupid.

Speaker A: So as a non exec now you've seen, you've almost, you have this spectator, uh, opportunity into lots of different boards and therefore lots of individuals at that level. Is that something you see across the board as a trend or do you feel like you were a bit of an anomaly in that at that level?

Speaker B: I have seen too many non execs who were there for the lunch. The careers had finished and they got a payday by being at the end and they added, that's grossly, grossly, grossly unfair to many. But the non exec role that I, I didn't think I would because I'd like to be. This is a bit of a control freak in here. I like the non exec role because you can ask the difficult questions as a non exec, you do not See the whole company, you don't, you see bits of it and very often you see the bits they want to show you. Well, I'm interested in the bits I don't want to show it. So having had a career asking difficult question, I found the knights that good. What I think I probably learned, matured and maybe because the pressure off, because I wasn't running the business, I didn't have to be quite so challenging or quite so difficult to ask the difficult question, but ask the question and the execs didn't want to be asked.

Speaker A: Do you mean in the style of your phrasing of a question? So still we have pointed question, but with a bit more fluff around it,

Speaker B: a bit gentler, uh, a bit gentle and a little bit more maneuvering outside of the meeting. I also made a habit as a non exec of not only appearing for the board meeting, but sticking myself in the office so I could sit there. The corridor, all they gave me was a corridor. People walking past, you could hear the chatter, you could hear what they were talking about, you know, and then you got to say hello to a few people and you get in a chat and you'd hear that. So when you got into the ball meeting, you could ask some questions you'd picked up. It may have been a lot of old rubbish, but it did mean the executives had to question some things. And the other thing I took into the non exec world is alliance was a great company. I liked Allianz, I like the Germans, I like their straightforwardness. I liked that they ran an organized business. So they were strong on governance and structure and responsibilities. You knew what you had to do to achieve your bonus targets. And when you didn't, even though we didn't get your full bonus because you didn't done all the things, you know, quite clear and things like being a big company, you could invest in training, we could spend £5 million on training and not bet an eyelid other companies couldn't spend. So when you walk away from a company like Alex, you walk away with a massive amount of knowledge structure, organize all the things that are the bedrock of big organized companies. And I went into companies that weren't that big or that weren't that organized, that didn't have that inbuilt structure that may be a bit more entrepreneurial. Things were decided by the CEO and the finance director. They didn't have formal executive committees and meetings. And their culture was able to find it just sort of grown up. Whereas companies like Allianz, we spent A lot of time on, on the culture. What's that? What do we want to be? What do we want people to see about us? Um, that's how they want us to see us. What do we know? What do our behaviors have to be to be so that people see you like that. If they want to see stability and technical excellence and we portray that and we spent some time on those things many other companies because I hadn't got that rigor and discipline that hadn't even come on their agenda. So bringing that into that environment. I think as a non exec help executives who are busy running the business think about things differently than I have done. Um, I think a good active non exec director is worth their weight in gold to the executive as a friend, as an ally and also someone that's going to challenge them a bit. I quite like that. Whether they liked it, I think they did because they it didn't sack me. So the other thing I did learn is don't take on too many non exact roles. Fresh from retiring from aliance. I think I took on five or six. I was stupid. You didn't have no time. You're working five times, you're full time barking. I eventually settled on one major one that I felt I could add some value to and had 10 good years here.

Speaker A: I remember writing contracts with non execs when I was in hr.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I wasn't aware of what a non exec was and I remember seeing how many days a year they were contracted to and being like so a typo like have we missed a zero on the end or something. There's uh, that kind of the idea that you're in for the board meetings which only happens so often a year. But to do the job well, like you say there's all this optional stuff that you want to get involved in within it. Uh. So for people that maybe haven't sort of got stuck into that type of role yet that want a realistic idea of what it might look like. How would you describe the role?

Speaker B: My contract was 20 days a year. I probably did 60, 70. Now that shows just how stupid I was. I actually enjoyed it because I hadn't really got work being no uh, longer being exit out of my system. I hadn't, you know I had to but I hadn't really got it. So. And that's a very fine line when you're a non exec to tread the line between getting operationally engaged and also I probably overstepped that line. I think if you do a decent Sized company as a non exec you've probably got to be looking irrespective of the contract says 40, 45 days. You can't possibly get to know the company, the culture, what's going on behind the scenes. Just turning up for the odd ball meeting, lunch, reading a few ballpapers, thousand page board pack. What a ridiculous thing for a non exec to be plowing through, you know. So um, I think there's lots of things we could do to help but I think you have to play your part in the company. You cannot, cannot undermine the executives but you have to be seen around a bit so people know who you are and what their role is. And most people in the company have never, never seen, don't see the shim. If it's a big company, they've never seen the shim, never seen a non exact director. They're in there, over there for a meeting. They're part of the salt, they are the supervisory board, they are the senior board.

Speaker A: So um, kind of gives me an impression of like an undercover agent a little bit. The way you describe some of those

Speaker B: bits, sometimes they go barely wrong. But so long as you have the confidence and the best interest of the executive team and at heart, yeah, you're a bit like that. You, you're giving a view. They don't have to take your view but they have, they should listen to it and take it seriously because you're coming without the day to day pressures. You're not running the company, you're picking. And when someone speaks to you as a non exec they uh, could be telling you bloody lies. It's just their view. It is just their view. It may be holy wrong or there may be a grain of truth in it. And most times I think there's a grain of truth in there because they've seen something or felt something that they weren't happy about. And one of the biggest barriers to staff feeling emotionally tied and good about the company is middle management. Middle management is some of the toughest jobs because you've got the staff here who see and m feel one thing and the senior executives who see and feel things that way. You're stuck in the middle. If you're a great middle manager, fantastic place to be because you've got both ends. But most, many people, many people end up uh, middle manager because they happen to be the best person at uh, the job that they were doing. So they're promoted to middle manager. They may not be the best middle manager. The skills required to manage people Manage all the complexities of managing up and down is a real tough cookie. And just because you happen to be the best underwriter or the best administrator does not equip you to be middle managers. Now, that's a tough cookie because somehow these people need to get on, but middle management may not be there. So middle management, for me, were always the big barrier to getting on. So go back to my alliance days. I spent a fair bit of time with the middle managers. So I'd go to our office, our branch offices, once or twice a year, just wander around, pl yourself down next to Johnny Hughes, you know, and chat to him, ask about his family or get some rapport going so that they felt quite comfortable telling me all the things they thought was wrong with the organization. Because that's poor people stuck in the middle. If you don't get your middle managers on your side, there's a big blockage in getting down to, huh, Johnny down there.

Speaker A: When you look back on all of it, what would be your highlight?

Speaker B: Becoming national president of the CII would have been a personal highlight because, um, none of the companies I'd worked for in the group had ever had a president, national president. It was, I like to think, um, an accolade from my fellow professionals at that moment in time. I find it very difficult to talk about Bazaar, but so the personal highlight, I would say that that's pretty big. But, uh, probably, probably is the thing that I think about most fondly is after toiling for 35, 40 years, being given the chance to run my own business. It wasn't my own business. I've already said I don't. I never want to be the number one. I wanted the boss. But given that chance to run that and build a team of people who shared the ambition and the drives and see us move from a normal rat to about the best. There's my gold medal, really.

Speaker A: Okay, so a, uh, couple of last questions. Ever since I've known you, you've always given me advice. Yeah, I've always seen you give lots of people advice. I know you've got lots of people you still mentor, that people have a huge impact over the industry that you generously give time and support to. What advice would you give to me in my situation? Navigate in the insurance market over the

Speaker B: next few years, you run a training development company. M. There's a crying need for that here. So just keep shouting, get in with people. Because not only will your business benefit, but other people will spend more time developing their people. Come back to the just where I started. If someone had told me that I had capabilities that I didn't know I had and helped me develop them, I would have. I don't know whether I would achieve more, but I wouldn't have had to fight all my life to prove myself. I could take things a bit easier and also unleashed the talent and capabilities I had earlier. So bring it on. You've got, I'm afraid, you've got to develop your business.

Speaker A: And what advice would you give for somebody who's starting out in a more traditional entrance into the market?

Speaker B: Don't be in a rush to succeed. We are short of really talented people and good people. Talent, in virtually every case, will rise to the top. So don't be in a rush. Build your skills in your work bag. You build that full of skills and experiences because you never know. You never know when you're going to need them. They might seem obscure at the time, but when that day comes, when you get a chance to do a big job, I say mine came when I was 50. You don't just want to do the job. You just don't want to be good. You want to be outstanding. Because that's what the people who work for you will want. And if you've acquired your skills and capabilities into your kit bag, you never know when you're going to need them. And we talked earlier about the way you sit at meetings, all the bosses you work for, the people who do good things, the people who do bad things, all those experiences that you tuck away so that when your chance comes, you do it right.

Speaker A: Thank you. Not just for this conversation. Sophie never sees me cry as well. No, but I think for me, you're one of the people. Whenever I see you in a room, I'm always so excited. And I'm excited when I see anyone I know. But seeing you, you come with just so much encouragement and reassurance for my journey. But I know that there are so many people you do the same thing with. And the idea that you're not here doing this anymore, and every time I see you like dancing, people that want help. To me, the fact you're always looking to do more for people, I think it's just so generous.

Speaker B: I do mentor a number of people, but I don't charge. I will not enter into a mentoring contract. I will not enter into a coaching contract. I certainly wouldn't do it for their employer because I don't want to be beholden to them. I don't want to have to do things because that's what the employer wants. Because any advice I give people are free to take it, ignore it, think I'm barking, think it's good. It's up to their choice. I can only speak from the experiences I've got. If that's useful to some people, fine. If it opens their eyes, I think, fine. If they think it's stupid or not, for them, fine. I'm, um, just as happy for them. At the end of the day, they've got to make of their life. The responsibility for people's development rests with them. The companies can give them all so much help. But it's down to you as to what you make of it. And if you choose to get off the roundabout, fantastic. If you choose to stay on there for the rest of the ride, fantastic. If you wimp out like me and say, well, I can't change job, I'll just stick for the ride, I have to say, it works out for you because good people are in short supply.

Speaker A: I think I might have told you this before, but that's the reason it's called empower development. We're just empowering people to manage their own development. Because you might have a great manager for a few years.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: But you're going to be with yourself the whole time. You've got to learn how to do it and why to do it.

Speaker B: And you will have a daft manager at some point.

Speaker A: Yeah. But we learn a lot from those.

Speaker B: You learn probably more from the duff, how not to do it. It's been a pleasure.

Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Speaker B: Sa mhm. Sam. Sa.