With 20 years of experience across travel, health, sport, government, and insurance markets, what drew you to Allianz Partners in 2018?

I have quite a diverse background across multiple industries and sectors, but the common theme has always remained the same: focusing on the customer, being relevant, making it easy, and understanding how to protect the customer – particularly from an insurance perspective when people can be in the most difficult of situations.

Allianz is one of the biggest insurance brands in the world and has a great reputation in terms of trust, which was a huge draw for me. The other factor was that, while the previous insurance company I worked with was very well established, it had only been in-market for 10–15 years. With Allianz there’s a huge history and legacy to draw on.

Finally, having started out my career in my home country of Australia, the global possibilities this role offered were very attractive. I wanted to explore global markets and I am grateful to now work across multiple territories.

You relocated to the Allianz Partners office in Paris in 2020 to focus on growing the student segment around the world. How did your relocation enable you to grow the student segment more effectively?

That was the intended strategy at the time, but it was the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, so it was very difficult to activate those plans. While the timing was challenging, it did present an opportunity to refine the offering available and prepare for post-Covid life. 

The student journey changed utterly during the pandemic as they, like everyone around the world, lost all mobility. On the one hand, we had students who couldn’t leave their home country and on the other, we had many who were stranded in their adopted country. Overall, we saw health and wellbeing suffer across the board and the result of that was an increase in claims.

From a personal perspective, having made the move from Australia, I understood the challenges involved in getting to grips with the workings of European markets, specifically the nuances of health systems, to support growth in the future. That certainly gave me an appreciation of the challenges facing students as they relocate for their studies, which has been helpful in terms of building a strategy to grow the segment.

Congratulations on your promotion last year to Head of Individual, SME, and Students. Can you tell us about the key responsibilities of the role?

How do we use technology as an enabler in an environment where change is faster than ever before?

Thank you. In this diverse role, I am responsible for the growth of these segments, leading a global sales team across both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) channels, including medical underwriting.

The way I think about it is, how do we achieve success today and enable future growth across all markets, understanding the different maturity levels in the different markets and cultural nuances that influence behaviours and product requirements? How do we use technology as an enabler in an environment where change is faster than ever before? And what obstacles do we need to overcome along the way?

What are the biggest challenges working across a range of business types? And what is the most rewarding aspect of it?

The most rewarding part of my job is working with a talented, experienced, and diverse team who bring energy and passion to everything they do. It’s great to see how ideas which work in some markets can then be adapted to other territories. For me, it’s also very rewarding to see our hard work pay off and achieve the growth results we are looking for.

When it comes to the challenges, I would say leading teams across multiple time zones and cultures is up there. How do we get the best collaboration across the teams, and how do we ensure we are communicating effectively so there is a shared understanding of the strategy and direction? There are so many opportunities, and it’s deciding what will really make a difference for our customers to create focus and deliver the best results. 

Since Covid-19, both business and leisure travel are on the rise internationally. How has Allianz adapted its offerings to meet the needs of an ever-evolving industry?

Post-Covid we’ve seen an even greater focus on mental health and wellbeing, which has really helped reduce the stigma surrounding this. Our products have been adapted with that in mind, including a greater emphasis on delivering easily accessible support services. One key learning from the pandemic was understanding how we can be even more customer-centric in the toughest moments of someone’s life.

Adapting to a digital-first model is more important than ever following the pandemic. This is something we were already doing at Allianz Partners, and it continues to be a core aspect of our solutions. It’s all about making it easier for our customers to access support, finding relevant medical providers and lodging their claims.

It really is an ever-evolving industry across so many elements of the value chain, and on a global scale there is never a dull moment. Whether it is regulatory change, behavioural change, or changing expectations, we always need to be on the front foot leading and adapting our solutions and service.

Can you tell us about Allianz’s ambitions to enhance fraud prevention measures?

We have a zero-tolerance stance on fraud for our employees, customers, and service partners. We’re leveraging technology for automated fraud detection based on configurable intelligent business rules and artificial intelligence (AI)-driven risk scoring, data models and document detection. This includes predictive scoring of each transaction (application/claim) on fraud potential, and automated network visualisation, which helps detect organised fraud networks.

Since the pandemic, we’re seeing a sharp increase in health awareness, so that’s something we’re bearing in mind

We also focus on ongoing optimised data analysis, integrating manual offline data models with automated models. Real-time data enables timely, informed decision-making and proactive fraud management, which also minimises the impact for our genuine customers.

Overall, we take a proactive, preventative approach to fraud, and this is very important to protect the sustainability of the business, and our broader customer base.

With its record growth in health business this year, where might we expect to see Allianz Partners focus its attention moving forward?

From a strategic point of view, our attention is focused on how we use technology, where we can leverage AI to enhance our business, create efficiencies and continuously improve our service to our customers.

Since the pandemic, we’re seeing a sharp increase in health awareness, so that’s something we’re bearing in mind as we plan with customer needs at the heart of what we do.

The rate of change is much greater than ever before. Our focus is on ensuring our products and services continue to meet the needs of our clients and globally mobile customers and align with the ever-evolving regulatory environment in which we operate.

We’ve recently merged our Allianz Global Employee Benefits solutions into Health so we will be looking to capitalise on the opportunities this creates within our global markets and relationships to enhance the solutions for our clients and members.