This is the second in a series of brief interviews with speakers, presenters, moderators or panelists at the Connected Insurance 2019 Event, which is being held November 20-21 in Chicago, IL. You can register for the event here. If you use the offer code, INSNERDS100, you will get $100 off your registration!

 What is your name and what do you do?

Scott Steele, Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer, Church Mutual Insurance Company, Merrill, Wisconsin

 

What is your role at the 2019 Connected Insurance Conference?
Presenting

 If you’re presenting, what can attendees expect to learn from your presentation?

Achieving calm amidst the chaos. 

While technologies, standards and user expectations evolve rapidly within a changing landscape, one thing remains constant – people. Each of us is moving toward a digital transformation at differing paces, with varying deadlines, pressures and challenges. Insurance is no different than other businesses. We, too, are being challenged to up our game from a technology perspective.

This transformation can be chaotic, often working in silo’s and focused solely on the technology solution. We tend to overlook the significant role emotions play in key stakeholder decision-making. No matter what stage we are in, we must never lose sight of the fact we are creating solutions with and for people. Join Scott as he shares his journey through the chaos of building emotional buy-in and bringing calm to the digital transformation process.

 

What do you see as the biggest challenges/opportunities for the Insurance Ecosystem in the next 5 years?

1. Identifying partner opportunities that are relevant to our customers – where do they fall within the value chain – it is too easy to chase shiny objects that, in the end, have no relevance to our customers and/or business and money and time are wasted
2. Identifying opportunities that are “innovative” to specialized niche’s, although they may already be available in other markets. Not all “new” ideas are necessarily “new”. There are technologies being used by other markets and other industries that have applications to our customers and verticals – it’s just that no one ever noticed it or did anything about it.
3. Monetizing the opportunities – how do we invest in a way that makes everyone money – and satisfies our customers.
4. Transforming the person-to-person distribution channel relationship to a more holistic and digital relationship. Our markets are still very people relationship oriented. It will take time to build the confidence and trust in other services and/or products when they don’t have a person sitting down with them.
5. Identifying the right data to be collecting, analysing and modelling. There is so much data available. And some data is in our legacy systems. What data do we go back and extract? What do we forget about? What data should be collecting moving forward? Where do we get that data? A lot of questions, especially when trying to provide a business case for partnering with another technology, product or service.

 

What is the best piece of advice you’ve received about building an insurance career?

Understand the people – customers, prospects, coworkers, associates, stakeholders, etc. – and their motivations and needs. It’s more about making the connection and building confidence than the nuts and bolts of selling policies. Policies should be the result of our understanding.

 

Did you choose Insurance or fall in to it? And, why have you stayed in the ecosystem?

I fell into it. I ran my own Marketing firm for 29 years and my current employer was a client. They made it an interesting and challenging career move – well worth it.

I’ve stayed because it is great to be part of building something special. Our company was behind in so many ways and, like a waking giant, we are now aggressively looking to not only catch up but also surpass our competitors. I’m involved in initiatives that have never been done here before – it isn’t “because we always did it that way”, it is “what are we trying to achieve and how can we do it?”

 

Besides your own session, what are you most excited about at Connected Insurance 2019?

I’ve never attended so I am just looking forward to taking it all in and deciding the value.