This is the first 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?
Daria Lee Sharman
I currently lead the nascent Customer Segmentation and Strategic Customer Analytics capabilities for Pacific Life. We have been given an incredible opportunity, by truly understanding and embracing a customized view, to use the behaviors and expectations of our consumers and distribution partners to reshape the narrative around life insurance-based solutions. Today, that means helping our business partners innovate within the customer experience of our existing model while also serving as their strategy consult to target investments for future evolution.
What is your role at the 2019 Connected Insurance Conference?
I will be speaking on enhancing the role of insurance in the life of the consumer
If you’re presenting, what can attendees expect to learn from your presentation?
A lively and engaging discussion about the use of art and science (gut feel and data fuel) to understand HOW the dynamics facing consumers today have shifted their perceptions of financial wellness and normalized their experience expectations across industries!
What do you see as the biggest challenges/opportunities for the Insurance Ecosystem in the next 5 years?
Consumers are leading increasingly non-traditional lives, but the industry has struggled on the whole to evolve from traditional products and positioning
The role of the advisor is changing – but not in the way that carriers had been planning… digital tools are increasingly important as advisor enhancement to building better, stronger relationships with their clients in order to truly impact their financial wellness needs
The influencer age is upon us! Advice comes from a myriad of sources – and is embraced, regardless of expertise, if there is a perception of trust by consumers… how can we harness the power of influencers while ensuring that we help our consumers separate ‘signal’ from ‘noise’ to penetrate a deeply underserved and underinsured population?
What is the best piece of advice you’ve received about building an insurance career?
Honor the past and, while not being restricted to it, use the learnings as a foundation to grow into the future.
Did you choose Insurance or fall in to it? And, why have you stayed in the ecosystem?
I jumped out of airplanes (jet engineering) into public sector retail finance (retail banking expansion footprint strategy) and landed in mutual insurance. I’ve stayed in the ecosystem because the opportunity is endless as we begin to rethink the customer experience and evolve away from product that fits needs, to solutions that match lifestyles. Consumers and distributors (financial professionals are consumers in their own right also) are faced with many challenges that our industry is either (1) well equipped to solve for today by reshaping the conversation, or (2) fully capable – with a little help from looking outside our own ‘four walls’ – design incredibly innovative solutions for tomorrow.
Besides your own session, what are you most excited about at Connected Insurance 2019?
Hearing from my peers and partners on this collective journey we are on. We have a shared mission to impact a vastly under-served and under-protected population … and if that isn’t inspiring, I don’t know what is!
About Carly Burnham
Carly Burnham began her insurance career in 2004 as an office assistant at an agency in her hometown of Duluth, MN. She got licensed as a producer while working at that agency and progressed to serve as an office manager. Working in the agency is how she fell in love with the industry. She saw firsthand the good that insurance consumers experienced by having the proper protection. When Carly moved to Des Moines in 2010, she decided to commit to the industry, and she completed her CPCU in one year finishing it in 2012 and attending commencement in New Orleans. She completed her MBA at Iowa State University in 2014. During this time, she and Tony founded a Gen Y Associate Resource Group at Nationwide in Des Moines. After they had both left Nationwide, Tony recruited Carly to co-author and manage InsNerds.com. She has the difficult task of keeping his constant flow of crazy ideas focused and helping to flesh them out into useful articles. Carly enjoys sharing knowledge and ideas about the future of the industry and finds the website a good outlet for this passion. Carly is involved in the the CPCU Society Underwriting Interest Group. She also writes "Next Wave" a monthly column in the "Perspectives" section of Best's Review.
Carly Burnham began her insurance career in 2004 as an office assistant at an agency in her hometown of Duluth, MN. She got licensed as a producer while working at that agency and progressed to serve as an office manager. Working in the agency is how she fell in love with the industry. She saw firsthand the good that insurance consumers experienced by having the proper protection.
When Carly moved to Des Moines in 2010, she decided to commit to the industry, and she completed her CPCU in one year finishing it in 2012 and attending commencement in New Orleans. She completed her MBA at Iowa State University in 2014. During this time, she and Tony founded a Gen Y Associate Resource Group at Nationwide in Des Moines.
After they had both left Nationwide, Tony recruited Carly to co-author and manage InsNerds.com. She has the difficult task of keeping his constant flow of crazy ideas focused and helping to flesh them out into useful articles. Carly enjoys sharing knowledge and ideas about the future of the industry and finds the website a good outlet for this passion.
Carly is involved in the the CPCU Society Underwriting Interest Group. She also writes "Next Wave" a monthly column in the "Perspectives" section of Best's Review.
