Q&A with David Nichols, UK Head of Retail
02/13/2023
Can you tell me about your career with Zurich to date, and how this experience will help with your new appointment as UK Head of Retail?
I've been with Zurich for 19 years. I started in the Commercial business as Head of SME, and have since had a mixture of roles, including operations and continuous improvement, through to claims, but the real turning points in my career are firstly my role as Chief Operating Officer with a Broker. I was responsible for sales, service, claims and IT, at a large personal lines provider, meaning I'm uniquely placed to understand what life is like as a broker from several perspectives. Having that knowledge means I'm going to be looking at the retail business through the lens of what will be important to brokers, how can we make the life of brokers easier and support them in doing what they need to for their customers.
The second would be my role as Chief Claims Officer. I've touched every part of the claims world and I therefore understand some of the drivers for claims inflation, the costs around claims, but also the need to join our proposition up. I will not just be looking to go live with a new product, but to go live with a great experience.
What are your plans for the retail business and responding to broker needs in 2023?
Our retail business is in great shape. There’s been some fantastic developments and work on products and market access which have allowed our brokers to self-serve and are brilliant capabilities, so I'm not looking at retail thinking we need to do things differently. What I will be looking for, are the next opportunities, getting closer to our brokers in the regions by expanding our regional presence as well as looking to see if there are new products that we need to go live with using some of the platform capability that we've already built. In addition to this, assessing where there's more work to be done on our end-to-end proposition, which is - what we offer our customers at the product stage versus what we can then do for them in a claims world and across the rest of their experiences with Zurich, which will be a fantastic opportunity.
Are you seeing any trends in the market, or are there any emerging risks that you see impacting the retail business in the near future?
The economic environment that we find ourselves in, in the UK, is a key risk. This means that everybody is feeling the squeeze, everybody is going to reassess the products that they need, how much they're prepared to pay for them, and whether they can in fact, in some instances, even afford the products that we offer. We must understand in terms of the payment solutions that we offer for our customers. There's some trends underneath that, though, we have seen large losses in retail in our employer’s liability and public liability that we just need to get to grips with and understand what's driving those. And in addition, there's a growing threat around cyber covers that we just need to be mindful of.
How would you say we keep ahead of insurance developments?
We have a well-connected set of teams in the UK, and some of that connectivity that we have in the UK business means that we're quick to respond to what we see, and to listen to our colleagues when they've got insights that we need to bring forward. We’ve also got strong broker relationships. We need to make sure that we continue to leverage that dialogue, because it's helpful insight in terms of what we need to do as an insurer and what we need to offer in terms of products to ensure we are meeting with the needs of the market.
We've had significant industry wide successes in 2022, from winning General Insurer of the year, to Five Star recognition for our eTrade platforms and for our Personal Lines business. How do you plan to take these successes forward and continue to focus on the customer?
Firstly, they're fantastic successes, and they’re great recognition of some of the things I've already talked about in terms of what we've done to access the market, what we've done to our products and the SME simplification that we've been through. However, 2023 we're back to ground zero, everything's reset. We need to look at what 2023 needs to be like to be able to develop and understand where we need to go next. I'm a great believer in continuous improvement and that means, let's understand what doesn't resonate with our customers and brokers, and let's find a way of eliminating that from what we do. For me, it's continuously looking at what we offer, where we get feedback and what we do with that feedback. That will mean that we're geared up for continued success.
Why do you love working for Zurich?
It’s a wonderful environment to work in. We have brilliant people, and I love the connectivity of our people. It's not just the fact our people are brilliant, it's the fact that we connect so easily across the UK business. I love the conversations about what people are getting on with, what challenges they're facing, because there's such a rich learning environment and the fact that people are willing to tell you about it, is a fantastic thing. The culture of our business is wonderful, it's very supportive and there’s a huge amount of opportunity for anyone that really wants to do something with their career.
What would you say is the top lesson that you've learned during your time at Zurich?
It goes back to what I love about Zurich. Most problems we face, somebody's had previous experience somewhere at some time, and the power of having a conversation about the things that are not working is brilliant because you will get ideas, and people will share how they've dealt with some of those similar challenges. We have a massively diverse team, and everyone's got an experience of something and joining up that experience is brilliant at solving problems.
What would you do if you weren't working in the insurance industry?
I've been in the insurance industry for 32 years, so I haven't even got a concept of what I would do. But what I would say is, if it wasn't the insurance industry, it would be something with lots of people interaction, lots of dialogue, lots of conversation and lots of opportunities to improve what we do for our customers, and it just so happens that we do that in the insurance industry.
