“It’s a great industry,” said Jon Winsbury (pictured above). “I think it’s better than banking because it can be so diverse.”
Winsbury is a 25-year insurance industry veteran and Gallagher Bassett’s (GB’s) executive vice president of international. He explained why he likes working in the insurance industry in a way that would probably leave many bankers agreeing with his verdict.
For a start, there’s what he described as “an awesome part of my job.”
“In my current role, it’s the exposure to different cultures,” said Brisbane-based Winsbury. “I’m responsible for everything outside North America so I’m able to jump on planes and spend time in Singapore with clients, in Hong Kong, in Europe and have business meetings in Milan.”
He particularly enjoys going to the UK and spending time in the Lloyd’s market. Even though he’s not responsible for North America, GB also gets him over there to attend company leadership meetings.
“Relatively recently I was in Canada and it’s amazing how similar and not similar it is and it hits you every time you are there,” said Winsbury.
These cultural similarities and differences, he suggested, contribute to a fascinating job.
“I like understanding how to navigate through these environments,” he said. “In Singapore, for example, you’re talking primarily to the business class there who are often Singaporean Chinese and there’s a different way that you need to interact with those people than you do when you’re sitting in the Midlands in the UK.”
Learning about the world’s different cultures through his work has been “the best part of my job for the last five or six years.” Apart from during the COVID period, he said, when, of course, no-one could travel.
Today Winsbury thoroughly enjoys all these overseas trips but it wasn’t always that way. He said what you like about your job “changes depending on your life stage.”
“Now, my kids are older - it was different when they were younger,” said Winsbury, who, despite his youthful appearance has four grown up children. Overseas work trips when kids are little, he said, are hard to balance with family life.
No-one in Winsbury’s family seems negatively impacted by any travel he may have done when the kids were younger. Three out of four children have chosen careers in the insurance industry, one is an insurance broker and two work in claims.
His eldest daughter is a longtail claims manager in workers’ compensation. He said she manages “really complex claims and she loves it.”
He described his oldest boy as “a natural born salesman.” He’s the insurance broker and “having a blast.”
One of his other younger sons is managing property claims, including nat cat claims from New Zealand clients.
What about the fourth child, asked Insurance Business? He’s studying physiotherapy.
“He said, ‘Dad, I’m not doing insurance, that’s not like me,’” said Winsbury, who didn’t seem completely convinced by his youngest child’s explanation.
With a 75% success rate convincing, deliberately or subconsciously, his own children to enter the industry, how would Winsbury convince a student to choose insurance as a career path?
“I would say it’s one of the industries where you can know very little about it and become an expert and succeed and have an incredibly healthy career,” he said.
He compared the insurance profession to law, where, even before you start you need a four-year university degree.
“In insurance, you can come in as a junior, you can study part-time and theoretically, you can advance through the ranks and become a very senior executive,” said Winsbury.
He said you can also choose to specialise in very different areas, including underwriting, claims or loss adjusting.
“There are so many segments that you can flow into whether you work for a managing general agent, an insurance broker, a carrier, or on the supply chain,” said Winsbury.
Not to mention insurtechs and IT, or complex insurance-related legal matters.
“You can go down many different paths and be rewarded for it,” he said. “The pay is pretty good too.”
What do you like most about your insurance career? Is there one aspect of your work that stands out? Please tell us below
