Diversity in the workforce may be a key business issue in the insurance sector, but customer diversity could also help unlock future growth, a panel of experts has said.
Speaking as part of the Dive In Festival, backed by Lloyd’s, Bettina Pidcock, chief customer officer of
QBE Australia, said that a focus on consumer diversity acts as an extension to the customer centricity that has become vital to any company’s success.
“Customer centricity offers a huge opportunity and as a business you are kind of mad if you are not thinking about that and how you can respond to that,” Pidcock said.
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At the event, sponsored by QBE alongside partners Sparke Helmore and Willis Towers Watson, Paul Zahra, global retail advisor, said that unlocking diversity could be a key to future business growth.
“Most businesses around the world are struggling with growth,” Zahra told attendees. “Even from an opportunistic perspective if you can tap these groups, whether they are minority or diverse groups, there is so much business to be had.”
Research conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission earlier this year found that organisations taking a stand on a social issue in a bid to improve equality or diversity stand to gain in the long-run.
Between one in three and one in four consumers, depending on the diversity message being portrayed by an organisation, are positively influenced to buy from a company, said Juliet Bourke, human capital partner at
Deloitte. On the opposite side, just one in 10 consumers believed a diversity message had negatively impacted their buying behaviour.
With the current debate surrounding marriage equality raging in all areas of Australian society, Bourke said that companies are catching on to the idea of social advertising as a moral and competitive advantage.
“Diversity speaks to us,” Bourke said. “I think what is interesting is that advertising caught on to it a little bit earlier and so you can push away that idea that sex sells because I think at this moment in our history, it is diversity that sells, equality that sells.”
Bourke said that it is key for businesses to understand that a diverse consumer base cannot be gained through false pretences and pointed to the controversial Pepsi ad campaign earlier this year, which saw the firm roundly criticised for missing the mark on race relations, as a cautionary tale.
“It is not just diversity sells, equality sells and you put on the mask of it,” Bourke continued. “There has to be some authenticity sitting behind it.”
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