Celebrating 20 Years

I recently celebrated my 20 year anniversary with Allianz Trade. I know, you’re thinking “he must have been 15 when he started there…” Close, 16. In honor of this milestone, I sat down with our Communications Team to take a look back at the last 20 years, challenges I’ve faced, how I lead and where I see Allianz Trade headed.

You've held positions at Allianz Trade Americas, Group, Northern Europe and the UK. Reflecting on these positions, what has been the most significant challenge along the way and how has it helped shape your career?

In my time here, there are two major challenges I’ve faced; undoubtedly, the biggest we faced as a business was the pandemic. In what felt like a single moment, we had to drastically change the way we had been operating for over 100 years, closing the offices down and operating in a completely remote fashion. I’m sure this sentiment is shared with most leaders; I can’t think of a bigger challenge I’ve faced thus far in my career.

The second was in 2008 and 2009, when the world went into a financial crisis; it was dramatic, particularly in the UK where I was based at the time. The challenges we faced, trying to navigate in those early days of the financial crisis, and before the banks and the governments came in and bailed out the financial system, it was substantial.

When you look at any situation where you face adversity, what most people need in an organization, or any walk of life, is affirmed leadership. They need to understand that we have a plan, how they’re connected to the plan, and feel motivated to action on the plan so that we are successful in our outcomes. When you're in a crisis, those are the key moments where you truly discover who you are as a leader and how to develop your leadership skills. You’re faced with the true fragility of things, one misstep and everything will fracture. But mistakes do happen, and when dealing with them in crisis you learn to quickly identify and adjust process, learning every step of the way how to become an effective leader, how to corral the resources you have within your leadership team and create reassurance for the organization.

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We understand that you were once a Rugby player. Are there any specific lessons or values from the sport that you've carried into your professional life?

Rugby is a fascinating sport and there's not really a direct analogy to it in US sport. They play with a ball the same shape as an American football; it's also a very contact driven game, but they're very different. Often, when I talk about rugby, I start with ‘what is rugby’ because other than the countries that play it, which is still a small number, people really aren’t familiar. But, when people discover the game, they fall in love with it and there's a good reason for that.

We’re just now beginning to see the sport more in America, you have the Major Rugby League (MRL) now, which is attracting big players from all over the world. Unfortunately, I wasn't born in a time when people paid rugby players, so it was simply my own personal sport, not a career opportunity.

When you look at rugby, one key thing that has always stuck out to me about the game is that it's a very inclusive and diverse sport. Looking at the rugby team, it's got 15 players on the field and they're all different shapes and sizes. You've got tall guys, small guys, thin guys, not so thin guys, fast guys, slow guys, and they can be from any part of the world. It takes each one of those people, of different shapes and with different backgrounds, to blend together and create this beautiful game; the skills of each individual creates the strength of the team. For me, this is the is the number one lesson I pull through into my life and leadership.

The other thing that sticks out to me is the number of leaders on the team. Of course there's the captain, but then there are numerous other leaders who are critical for decision making on the field, which is not so simple given that the game is complex, played at a very rapid pace and continuous. There's no breaks unlike American football; they keep playing until the referee blows the whistle. The ability of the leadership on the field is essential to the success. Also, the leaders are interchangeable, roles and jobs may switch at any time. This is similar to what we’re seeing in modern leadership teams, roles and people are interchangeable and will help make decisions, even if it’s not within their direct field of responsibility. The ability to have that leadership style is absolutely something I've taken with me on my journey.

Now, I think the most important takeaway for me with rugby is that there's a huge emphasis on respect, particularly towards the officials, or referees. In fact, players still call them Sir on the field of play. You accept their decisions and respect it, even if you disagree. The same goes with respecting your opponents. You’ll see, there's two 200-pound guys whacking into each other and then at the end of the game, they’re embracing each other and enjoying a beer. That respect is also something that I've taken into my personal and professional life.

I’ll also give a little plug; for anyone interested in learning more about rugby, as well as the leadership skills taken from it, I wrote an article last year that’s also available on my LinkedIn.

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Twenty years is a significant milestone. Looking ahead, what are your aspirations for the company's future?

When I first started at Allianz Trade in Americas, we looked at what was possible and set out visions of what we could build here. Looking at the income we were creating, it was evident that the region had lots of potential for success. As a result, we began building out our company strategies. These plans were very much about creating a team and an organization that would be able to develop the US marketplace, while significantly improving our performance. Since then, we’ve delivered on many of our goals and the region continues to grow at a tremendous rate each year. Among our successes were the launch of Surety and all our other specialty businesses that we currently have now. I am proud to say the components of our strategies are fully engaged, and we are delivering to the potential the region has always promised to deliver.

What’s next? It’s an exciting time now as we're closing out our current growth strategy and building the new one. Following the positive momentum we’ve created for Trade Credit and Surety, our focus now is maintaining that momentum, creating new relevancy and building new marketplaces; while at the same time keeping our customers top of mind. It’s incredibly important that our customer base is fulfilled, gets value out of our products and receives the best service from our people so that they ultimately continue to stay with us. Building that customer experience and customer value proposition is just as exciting as building new marketplaces.