Catching up with Berni Hackett
06/14/2023
We spent some time chatting with Berni Hackett, 12 months into her role as Head of Customer & Distribution Management at Zurich, about what the focus has been so far, the best parts of the role, and a look ahead to this years' Airmic conference.
How are you finding your first year in your new role?
I absolutely love it, it’s the best job in the insurance market. Already having worked with the team definitely helped the transition, but first and foremost the role allows me to bring together everything I love most – working with brokers and customers on a daily basis.
What has been the main focus of the past 12 months?
The focus really has been around the customer and broker experience, delivering excellence regardless of what segment you’re in and in turn producing advocates of our business. We want to do a great job for our partners, so we listen to our customers, be creative and challenge ourselves to make sure we’re providing the best possible solutions for them. Digitalization has been key, we’ve made a big push to look at more ways we can help and My Zurich is one way of doing that, making sure we can use as much information as possible to provide a seamless, sustainable and smart automated process.
What can we expect for the rest of 2023? What are you looking to achieve in the second part of the year?
The main focus will be renewing the business we have, and continuing to bring new customers into the fold and continuing to grow the business. The best way for us to do that is to work with our team, be creative and come up with great solutions that can help us retain and win business and ensure confidence in our business and be a really trustworthy partner.
Moving onto Airmic, what are the key messages people can expect to see from us this year?
We’ll have a big presence this year, with representatives from our customer and broker teams as well as our underwriting teams and someone from every line of business we offer. We’ll also have our Zurich Resilience Solutions (ZRS) team there, who we have a fantastic new partnership with and they’ll be able to have in-depth conversations about Risk Clarity which brings together all sorts of risk data from an organisation into one place and can help provide insight into the risks they face. The other key message from us will be climate change, so we’ll be talking about how we can support our customers through climate change and making sure we have insurance solutions in place and consultancy services to help understand the risks better as they transition into a greener world. We still have our net zero target for 2030 so it’s really important to us to talk about where we’re going and be transparent about our own process.
What are you looking forward to individually at Airmic?
I’m incredibly excited for it, I love the event and it’s a great opportunity to see so many wonderful customers, brokers and old friends, and to make new friends. It’s a great place to walk around and connect, there’s always some fantastic opportunities to learn about what is happening in the wider market. There will be some great sessions to attend, such as Frank Streidl talking about ESG and the great work we’re doing there. Caroline Dunn will also talk about the importance of modernizing the marketing and being more digital which will be great, so I’m really excited by the presence we’ll have there.
