Q&A with Kevin Morton (He/Him) Head of Zurich Private Clients
11/23/2021
How did you get into the insurance sector?
I worked in a bank as my first job after leaving college and after a couple of years decided I wanted to do something different. Zurich were a huge employer where I was living at the time and were advertising for an Underwriting Assistant, I applied and was successful. I didn't have any grand career plans to end up in insurance, even though my Dad and his Father worked in the industry for their entire careers, maybe it’s in the blood, I’ve been with Zurich for 21 years now!
My first job in our Personal Lines call centre in Portsmouth gave me a great grounding and enabled me to learn the foundations that I have since built on.
What is it you enjoy most about working in the industry?
I would say it's that sense of purpose, being there for people in their time of need. Whether that's our life products that provide comfort to a family when a loved one has lost their life or been diagnosed with a critical illness or rebuilding a family home following a catastrophic loss. Ultimately, we’re here to deliver on a promise to our customers when things go wrong.
The other thing, and I know everyone talks about the people, but the variety of people you meet in the industry is vast. Learning from different people’s experiences and the variety in our industry makes it a really exciting place to be.
What does a typical day look like for you?
There isn't really a typical day but given that I've just started a new role it’s a little easier to answer. I've spent the first couple of weeks meeting lots of people, internally and externally, really getting under the skin of the business and the Hight-Net-Worth (HNW) market. It’s important to me to listen to our broker partners about their experiences, where they see the future of the HNW market and how we can support them and their clients. There’s plenty of opportunities in the market that I’m looking forward to us grasping with both hands.
What is the main focus of your role?
I'm responsible for our end-to-end HNW proposition as well as the overall financial performance. Ultimately, making sure that we deliver for our key stakeholder groups including our customers and broker partners.
You just spent the last few years working in Zurich Municipal, our public sector business, what learnings from this role will you be taking into ZPC?
The role that I had for the last few years in ZM was all around strategy development, I will take a lot of learnings from how we built the strategy, looking out beyond our immediate horizons.
More broadly, it’s probably that no matter the complexity of the risk that we’re presented with we have the expertise to find solutions for our customers that maybe seemed impossible at times. That approach to complex risks is another learning thing that I will bring to ZPC.
What would you say is the top lesson you’ve learnt through your career?
Be yourself. It might get me into a little bit of trouble sometimes, but I think being genuine, open, and transparent is always best. I'd also say that being inquisitive is hugely important, there’s always new things to learn.
I don't think there’s anything more complicated than that really, we live in a complex environment but sometimes doing the simple things well can take you a long way towards the right result.
How do you keep ahead of risk management developments?
Lots of listening. Our broker partners have a lot of insights, they're speaking to our customers day in, day out as well as the industry more generally. Trade press is an obvious one, but I've got memberships to multiple publications and there’s always valuable information and insight to be found by reading them. We've got excellent internal resources and a raft of experts within our organisation as well, so I also make sure that I'm in regular dialogue with them too including our expert team of Client Managers.
What excites you about returning to the ZPC business?
The high-net-worth industry is a very easy one to get passionate and excited about, you see things that you wouldn't see in any other personal lines book of business. The type of clients you're dealing with and the different risks that they face really bring a unique challenge.
As a business, ZPC has really evolved since I left it 7 and a half years ago. We acquired Oak so we’re a much larger organisation now and there’s obviously a lot of new faces to meet. I’m also really excited to re-engage with our broker partners and the market more generally
I’m really excited to start working with our team and shape what I know will be a very bright future for our HNW business.
What would you do if you weren’t working in the insurance industry?
If I could have picked anything else, I would have been a professional footballer, sadly I wasn’t blessed with anywhere near enough ability for that to come to fruition!
What one thing would people be surprised to know about you?
This might be a bit of a cheat, but I did beat Mo Farah in the London Marathon. He only ran half of it after he started stepping up his distances following his retirement from track running. He could probably have run it twice in the time it took me to go round once but technically I finished the marathon, and he was a DNF that year!
What do you love about working at Zurich?
The thing that I love about working at Zurich is the opportunities that come from working in this organisation. I've worked for Zurich for just short of 21 years in April, and I've had several different roles in various parts of our organisation.
The other thing I’d say that Zurich does better than others is really pushing the community and sustainability agendas. Things like ZCT and the and the time we get for charitable work within our roles is amazing. Zurich really does care about the communities that we all work and play in.
Is there anything else you would like me to add to the article?
Just to reiterate how much I am looking forward to working with our broker partners and delivering for them and our customers, it’s exciting to be back in the HNW market!
