Since starting her insurance broking career at Willis in 2001, Kate Browne (pictured) has seen the market evolve at pace, transformed by a range of forces - among them regulatory shifts, changing market conditions and the advancement of new technologies.
Speaking with Insurance Business, Browne, who was named chief operating officer at McGill and Partners Ireland in January 2021, emphasised the impact of the latter on how the industry operates today. “Perhaps it’s a bit of a cliché but even when I physically left London in 2017, there were still people walking around with briefcases of paper: whereas now, with the onset of technology – and COVID probably helped, it has moved us to more of a digital age.”
What cannot be underestimated is the impact that AI has had on the way the market is working, she said, and that’s especially evident from an operations perspective. The question now is how these technologies can best be deployed to automate the mundane tasks that take up the valuable time of talented staff and free people up to do what they’re really passionate about – supporting their clients.
“On the operational side, I think we are going to see an apparent shift over the next, probably two years,” she said. “On a course I did recently, one of the modules was on AI and it was recognised that this was the worst version of AI you’re ever going to see, it’s only going to get better. It’s important not to limit ourselves in terms of thinking about what we can do, this is about the art of the possible.”
Leveraging AI means thinking beyond how it can replicate and automate current processes, Browne said, it’s about taking a step back and asking how new technology might actually revolutionise that process.
As to what she hasn’t seen change in her career to date – and what she doesn’t believe is likely to change going forward – Browne points to the relationships at the heart of insurance broking. “That’s the relationship between us and our clients, and the relationship between us and the market. And it all comes back to us making sure that we understand our clients’ businesses so that we can go out to the market and make sure the coverage is correct, and the price is correct.
“Even with the onset of technology, you’re not going to see that relationship fundamentally change, it will always be there. What we’re hoping to do is automate the mundane, and free people up to build the relationships that go along with complex business by talking to clients, understanding their businesses and being innovative in terms of coverage.”
On a more personal note, another fundamental shift that Browne has seen since she joined the market has been the shift towards greater diversity and inclusion. There are now more women in the industry, she said, and there are certainly more senior women in the sector than when she started her career and often found herself the only woman at the table. That has been a very positive change.
“Being able to bring different personal experiences to every conversation is what helps us be innovative because it means we’re not all sitting in echo chambers thinking and saying the same thing,” she said. In that sense, technology has gone a long way to levelling the playing field, because it has demanded the need for greater innovation and more diversity of thought when it comes to deciding how to leverage and utilise new tools and solutions.
“Anything that encourages you to take a step out of the norm is a positive from that perspective,” she said. “Because if you’re brainstorming an idea, it’s having diversity of opinion that allows what somebody else says to trigger something in you that will make you think a bit differently. So, when we look to innovate we need everybody in the room – we need brokers, operations, compliance, governance etc. to bring their perspective. And I think that’s how we’ve been successful so far.”
Looking back on her time in the insurance market and how the sector has changed, Browne said she would highly recommend insurance as a career to young people considering it is an option. It offers a genuinely interesting and varied career, she said, and you won’t get bored. For women in particular, who do tend to carry the larger proportion of childcare or other caring responsibilities, she advised on the need to make the right choice of firm.
“As insurance organisations, we need to recognise that many women have two jobs and it’s important that we don’t make them choose,” she said. “Don’t ask people to choose their work over their family.
“We need women making brave decisions, and we need people supporting them. That means not making them choose between family life and work life, we have to support both.”
