Natalie Bate

Head of Housing, Education & Charities

Experience and expertise

Natalie Bate is Head of Housing, Education & Charities at Zurich Municipal, leading teams that support social housing providers, education institutions, charities and social organisations across the UK. She is responsible for developing sector strategies, strengthening customer and broker relationships, and ensuring Zurich Municipal continues to deliver solutions that help organisations manage risk, build resilience, and protect the services their communities rely on.

Natalie has built her career across a broad range of leadership, operational and strategic roles. Her experience spans underwriting, claims, relationship management, business transformation and corporate strategy, including working closely with the UK CEO to support the delivery of Zurich UK's strategic priorities.

With more than a decade of experience in insurance, Natalie brings a strong understanding of both customers' evolving needs and the wider challenges facing the public sector. She is passionate about building long-term relationships and developing propositions that deliver value beyond insurance, helping organisations navigate emerging risks and achieve their goals.

A Chartered Insurer (ACII), Natalie is recognised for her commitment to deliver positive outcomes for customers and colleagues. Alongside her professional career, she has supported community initiatives including volunteering with Age UK to help tackle loneliness and social isolation.

In conversation with Natalie Bate

From listening to feedback and responding to changing needs, to giving customers more choice in how they interact with us, Natalie explains how we're evolving from being an insurance provider to becoming a trusted partner.

My role at Zurich is to lead the teams that provide insurance and risk solutions for the breadth of the housing, education and charity customers that we support.

What motivates me most about my role is how my team and I can make a true difference to real people in our communities every day. I'm really proud of how we've strengthened trust with our customers.

We are more open, we are more present in the markets. This has helped us move from being seen as a provider to a true partner. We're currently working on making sure that our customers are right at the heart of our organisation, right from the strategy to the day-to-day delivery of operations. A few examples of this are how we're responding to tenders, how we're responding to feedback, how we're showing up in the marketplace, and giving our customers more choice in how they interact with us.

What excites me most about the next steps is momentum and change. We're asking better questions. We're hearing much more honest feedback. This means that we are going to do things differently and better.