Come out, come out wherever you are and take the praise you deserve

Ah, the unsung hero. The one who just quietly and consistently does a great job but seldom seeks or receives the praise and recognition they deserve.

But today I profile 11 of the best unsung heroes in insurance and with them, I take a look at another category that doesn’t often get the praise they deserve – the change specialist.

They are the ones who deliver those great transformation projects, restructures and system changes and make the success of them seem a foregone conclusion. But who are they? Read on and find out who the best female change specialists in our industry are.

And don’t forget to nominate your candidate for the Outstanding Achievement Award. It’s a biggie, THE biggie, so take the opportunity to have your say in who wins it.

Category 1: Unsung hero of the Year

Lesley Attu, ARAG

Starting out in life insurance 40 years ago, Lesley made the move to legal expenses in 1982 and from that moment, she has thrown herself into it. So much so, that Lesley has made significant contributions to her wider market, contributed to Law Society literature, been involved in Civil Justice Committee working groups and has moulded the products her company sells to ensure they are fair, insightful and anticipate customer needs.

Kim Ellis, Policyfast

From a career in PR to head of a business division, Kim has focused on delivering results whilst respecting people’s inherent values. She has worked hard to create an environment where her people feel free to challenge, share ideas and work as part of a genuine team and insists on leading by example.

Marcelle Foxcroft, AXA

Having made the move into insurance from investment management, Marcelle is now head of resourcing at AXA. Clearly very passionate about her role, she understands that she and her team are a key reason people join the business and has made it her mission to bring greater diversity to the organisation.

Ami Fromson, Tesco Underwriting

A fraud prevention manager, Ami freely admits that her entry into insurance was purely to pay for a car while she was at college. But from those humble ambitions, she has risen in her career to become a crucial player in the anti-fraud operations in her organisation despite suffering from the all too common imposter syndrome.

Iowa Morgan, AIG UK

One of those people whose enthusiasm for insurance is self-evident, Iowa is a claims manager who seems to be a social glue within her organisation. She has put a huge amount of work into bringing together various networks, most notably in the less glamorous, but no less important, areas of disability, mental health, fertility and the menopause.

Helen Murphy, LV=General Insurance

A career in insurance appears to have won out over one as a nursery nurse for Helen and after several years in customer service and team leader roles, is now a product owner. She manages to keep people onside and expectations managed in a difficult role pushing through change whether that be company-wide or smaller change projects.

Alice Roberts, Aston Lark

As learning and development manager, Alice is responsible for all employee development in the business be that securing CII qualifications or carving out career pathways. Central support functions can often be overlooked but Alice has overcome this by setting up several initiatives that make a real difference to the development of the company’s people.

Elisha St Hilaire, Aon

Beginning her career in the City at the tender age of 16, Elisha began in the legal sector before making the move to Aon in 2009. The fact that she says she was “stunned and speechless” to have been nominated by her colleagues, despite chairing her company’s Gender IQ Network, co-chairing its Multicultural Network and acting as event lead for iCAN, is typical of the mentality of unsung heroes.

Kate Symons, LV=General Insurance

After a 15-year career in the public sector, Kate is now head of operational change. She says that she has always striven to deliver more than asked, be the one to step up and take responsibility and make sure people are recognised for their skills9. She can admit that she has ultimately been responsible for the delivery of several large projects but isn’t great at taking the earned praise. Maybe this is the start of a change to that.

Tricia Tietema, tifgroup

Starting with a summer job providing emergency assistance to travel customers, Tricia has been dedicated throughout her career to providing fairly-priced cover for everyone, regardless of disease or disability. So much so, that in the mid-80s, it was Tricia who introduced manual medical screening which was later replaced by the digital process we all use today. Throughout her career, she has been quietly working away in the background to change the way her part of the market works.

Natalie Wood, Co-op Insurance

Starting in insurance in 2007 to save some money to travel, Natalie fell in love with the Co-op and now works as a supply chain manager. She spends a great deal of her own time supporting wider business initiatives, supporting colleagues and driving (and taking part in) a host of charitable activities.

Category 2: Change Excellence Award

Louise Beale, LV=General Insurance

As operational change manager, Louise has been responsible for two operational workstreams (transition and migration) in the largest transformation programme her business has ever undertaken. She managed to avoid many of the pitfalls of operational change by ensuring that the new operating model, training and work practices were all in place allowing for BAU during the change.

Kelly Belton-Brown, Neon Underwriting

Having had a very varied career that has taken in underwriting, broking and setting up an MGA, Kelly is now head of distribution, underwriting and support and operations at her current organisation. Brought in to manage the service team, she made immediate, positive, changes and was able to secure investment to give the team the resource to deliver on its objectives and the financial results reflect the success of this.

Penny Bishop, Towergate Insurance Brokers

From office administrator to operations director in 35 years, Penny has undertaken a lot of different roles in her career. Over the last two years, she has been responsible for the transition of over 120 operating systems to one core system over 65 offices whilst ensuring that there was no disruption to BAU, which made her entry stand out to the judges.

Bettina Gross, Allianz

In the pursuit of a new work culture, Bettina made the move to the UK (within the same company) to take up the position of head of procurement. She has grown an understaffed team with a focus on diversity of people and skillsets and has established procurement as a key function in the business delivering a financial saving of over ￡5m in 2018.

Angela Kinsville, LV=General Insurance

Getting involved in change after many years in operations, Angela has been involved in the launch of new companies, products, channels, partnerships and services and successfully lobbied for a change to her company’s legacy software systems. She assumed the role of operations director for the project and successfully coordinated the migration of customers and employees to the new system.

Claire Mills, Allianz 

Having shown early promise in being chosen at Groupama to join a taskforce to drive greater efficiency in the business, Claire joined Allianz in 2011 where she is now senior project manager. With the joint venture between LV and Allianz, Claire was tasked with delivering two of the projects within the programme, one to transfer 80 broker schemes and the other to set up the Lloyd’s Box, a first for Allianz.

Nicola Sutherland, Tesco Underwriting

Working in training and development since 2005, Nicola has led significant business-wide projects focused on culture change. She led and coordinated the Fit for Digital programme, the aim of which was to ensure that employees were technically and culturally ready to ensure a fundamental operation transformation had the desired results.

Victoria Sutton, Aston Lark

Victoria realised early in her career that she had a naturally strategic approach to problem solving and started applying this to processes and people management. As an associate director, she has been responsible for reimagining and restructuring her organisation’s motor claims offering in the midst of a merger and for making claims service an integral part of the company’s sales process.

Melanie Walker, Bought By Many

A recent entrant into insurance, Melanie has a long and varied career in change management. This track record has continued at Bought By Many where she has automated renewals for all pet insurance customers, overhauled the direct debit payment process and is currently working on a project which she believes will revolutionise the customer experience.

Nicola Walsh, URIS Group

Nicola’s role as business services director covers business change, business applications, in-house development, data management and business intelligence giving her an incredibly broad view of change in the business. She can point to the completion of several complex change projects and, importantly, is able to evidence the financial benefit of those projects.

And as always, there will be more of this wondrous celebration of talent tomorrow.