Q&A with Stuart Gallagher (He/Him), UK Head of Sales, Zurich Resilience Solutions
How did you get into the insurance sector?
I think I've seen answers to this question before from colleagues which is, like most people, “I fell into it”. I left school post A-levels where I studied maths, economics, and geography. I’d always fancied doing something financially biased and basically left school and went straight into applying for accountancy roles, stockbroking, banking and insurance; something that would be numerically based and went through various interviews, finally ending up being offered an underwriting job at a company called Guardian Royal Exchange [GRE]. GRE doesn't exist anymore and was eventually was bought out by AXA. After GRE I’ve worked at Royal & SunAlliance, the CII, AIG, Aon and now here I am at Zurich soon to be entering my fifth year. Each role has brought a new growth in my career, highlights and challenges and has always been interesting so, ‘falling into it’ has been a very positive thing for the last 35 years! And now I’m taking on a new challenge once again in Zurich Resilience Solutions.
How's that been moving to sort of something that's purely risk focused rather than sort of the insurance product in itself?
It's been really interesting because I did a lot of work and engagement with our Risk Engineering team as a Global Relationship Leader and got to know a lot of the risk engineers and the leadership team, looking for ways to sell on our services and promote Zurich Risk Engineering to our customers. You know the rule, the more touch-points of engagement that a customer has with a company, the ‘stickier’ they are!
Throughout my career I’ve studied for various Chartered Insurance Institute qualifications, which I whole-heartedly recommend by the way, so I qualified with my Associateship [ACII] and then I studied for my Fellowship, as well. And through doing the ACII I took the Risk Management course which looked at the real and practical application of risk management and mitigation techniques to help make the risk better overall. I enjoyed studying that as it was something tangible and real and covered areas such as construction, fire protection, liability and legal risk mitigation and business interruption management.
In this role there was therefore a great appeal of thinking if I can help to encourage customers to think about risk management just as much as risk transfer, that ultimately, we have been helping to improve the underwriting risk. The new and exciting challenge around this of course is to now generate stand-alone fee income at the same time as providing our continued underwriting risk assessment and survey work so really, it’s a natural and interesting fit for me.
What is it you enjoy most about working in the industry?
The people, more than anything else and by the people I mean the colleagues I've worked with, the customers I've known, the third-party advisors, the claims consultants, lawyers, and trade bodies such as Airmic. Being able to get involved in technical conversations with those people concerning real-life risk issues and make a difference is pretty special.
It's hard to name any business in the world that could operate or choose to operate without some form of insurance, and we are basically a facilitator of either helping companies to operate or when they have a loss to get back on their feet quickly and profitably. I’ve been involved in some pretty significant claims issues over the years too, so when you pay the claim the client sees the true value of the policy and your relationship – it’s the real moment of truth for an insurer.
The other dimension of the role that I've really enjoyed over the years is working with some of the world's biggest companies. Household brand names, FTSE 100, Fortune 500, and some private companies as well, who are just enormous organisations with lots of complex risks. Their Risk Managers and Risk Management teams – along with so many others – are just such so knowledgeable and engaging and of course, as is their right, challenging at times! Being part of any company’s insurance and risk solution as their insurance provider or fronter, broker or now for me, risk adviser helping them to operate and to trade is just hard to get your mind around sometimes.
What do you find is the main focus of your day?
My main focus is really spreading the word about Zurich Resilience Solutions and how we can help our customers. That means helping our customers to build their resilience today, to protect their future and become their trusted partner, giving the benefit of hindsight in advance. Historically these services have been largely towards providing underwriter reassurance and now we have the freedom to offer these services to anyone, regardless of whether they have risk transfer products with Zurich or not. We are building a new service business, which is really exciting and means we need to ensure our distribution networks are aware and bought into our journey.
That's what's really keeping my mind active now, and then taking our products and services and making them more accessible internally. We are working brilliantly as a team to create accessible, interesting, and meaningful content on our SharePoint sites that any colleague can access within a few clicks to be able to share with customers – it’s fantastic. Cyber was the first – go check it out on the internet – it’s pretty compelling! And sustainability is a key priority too and we’re talking a lot to a variety of organisations about this at the moment; it’s a topic that is only getting larger. Every company, for every risk solution, needs to be clear on what its proposition is to help the customer and those in other parts of the business to understand what’s relevant and how ZRS can help them.
What would you say is the top lesson you’ve learnt through your career?
I think my most important lesson, has always been to take the best of everyone that you either report to as a manager or work with as an individual and learn from them. Many of my ex-colleagues and managers may hopefully be reading this in fact and will know who they are! Of course, we'll never get on with everybody all the time and will never work with everybody in exactly the right way and things don't always run smoothly so, just take all of those learning opportunities through your engagements with people. You can always learn something from the people around you.
Thinking ‘I like the way they did that’, or ‘I wouldn't do this that way’ and ‘I wonder how that would have worked if…’- if you take the amalgamation of all those good things every time you see somebody or interact with them in a way that you like and build that into your own work ethic it will stand you in great stead for the future.
Aligned to this is cultivating a positive and inclusive mind-set. We need to be solutions focused. It’s OK not to agree with everything, just have your arguments ready as to why it could be better. If there’s a problem, think through a better solution and don’t be afraid to share thoughts and discuss ideas with others in advance; have your trusted advisors around you and listen to them, they are a huge help. I have had some of these for over 20 years to help me solve tricky problems – some I’m still in touch with, some who are retired and some sadly no longer with us – but I remember and am grateful to all of them.
How do you keep ahead of risk management developments?
It's really about aligning our products and services to what is going on in the real world. Just saying ‘We have a great supply chain product, ‘We can help you’ isn’t enough. That has no story. It has no meaning. What customers are looking for is: ‘Why is this important to me? Why are you talking to me about it? Why have I not registered this as an issue in the past?’
So, what we need to be doing is looking at what's happening in business and industry and translating it into the issues that are affecting our customers and helping them understand how it could impact them. Here are some things that could happen as a result of you not doing anything. And here's where we can potentially help. Would you like to have a conversation? That is critical. We are fortunate that within the team at ZRS we have what we call a “Risks and Insight Committee”, and they are the team who have got their eyes open and ears to the ground on what is happening in the world and they produce excellent thought leadership content for colleagues and customers. I need to make sure that we are connecting that insight to one of our solutions and customers know how to talk to us about how it is affecting them.
What would you have been doing if you hadn’t gone into the insurance industry?
My initial choice of career was to be in the RAF and train as a pilot or work for a commercial airline. I got as close to standing on the recruiting office steps of the RAF office in Leeds in 1986 when I was 18…and basically talked myself out of it as I’d never had any Army or Air Corps training and so thought about becoming a commercial pilot instead. All I’d say there is that I got some of the worst career advice ever from my school – but that’s for another day – just don’t ever believe that a geography teacher knows about the aviation industry!! That taught me an important lesson about having a broad network of friends and associates. Having the ‘right’ people to seek advice from is important.
Or it would have been trying my very, very hardest to be a professional golfer. I was half-decent when I was young (c. 12/13 years old) but really didn't push myself hard enough to thinking I could get really good at this if I tried and committed. Those are probably the two things that I would have liked to have done – or at least had a go at pursuing.
What one thing would people be surprised to know about you?
Well, prior to the birth of our first child (where did those 20 years go?) I was a real thrill-seeking adrenaline junkie type. So, any fast cars - rally driving, track driving, go-carting etc., the steepest, fastest scariest roller-coasters; and I have also thrown myself off a 5000-ft cliff (with a parachute) …but that all stopped in 2002 as needed to be more responsible and make sure I was going to be there for my family.
What do you love about working at Zurich?
I would say three key things: the people, the ability to have really engaging customer conversations with colleagues and everyone working together as a team, maybe that sounds a bit trite but it’s true. I’ve always found, certainly as a Global Relationship Leader when I've hit a problem the ability of Zurich to pull itself together as one team to find a solution at short notice, is really impressive and focused on the best possible outcome. Impressive leaders, great people managers and brilliant colleagues – what else can I say?
And the company’s adoption of flexible working for all staff. You know it's not just about whether you're a manager or a new starter and you know everyone has the ability to choose their work-lifestyle and to help them be the best employee by making sure they can work in the best way they can. I think that means a lot to a lot of colleagues and myself.
How can people find out more about ZRS?
Talk to us, find out more about us. As was mentioned earlier whether you are an insured customer or not, ZRS is ready to listen to customers’ issues and there is always an opportunity to have a conversation. We want to know how we can help. Speak to your usual Zurich contact or email our team at zrs.enquiries@uk.zurich.com. Or just hit the button to ‘Link-In’ with me!
We love meeting new companies and sharing our story too….we are definitely here to listen and here to help!
