In this guest blog, Thomas Lundberg, CEO of Åland Mutual (Finland), reflects on a recent visit to two fellow ICMIF member organisations based in the Netherlands, facilitated by ICMIF. He shares what he considers to be his key insights and learnings from the visit.
If you are, like us at Åland Mutual, a small and independent insurance company, it may at times feel lonely with a world of challenges, changes and never-ending tasks to complete. In order to re-fuel and get inspiration and motivation it is therefore great that ICMIF is there to support us in establishing connections with other mutuals around the world.
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of visiting two fellow mutual insurers based in the Netherlands, Univé Dichtbij and Onderlinge ‘s-Gravenhage, during a two-day visit in The Hague and Herenveen. The visit was facilitated by ICMIF and was an excellent reminder of the common challenges and opportunities that mutuals and cooperatives share around the world.
I also used this opportunity to bring three young leaders from our company with me on this trip to the Netherlands. We have been driving an internal leadership initiative at Åland Mutual for a limited number of selected high-potential employees, and saw this international exchange as a final activity within that programme,
During this two-day visit, we openly shared, discussed and workshopped ideas, challenges and potential solutions with fellow mutual leaders around matters like digitalisation, sustainability and mutuality. The sessions were in the format of “give and get”, where each insurance company openly shared experiences, strategy and actions within these three areas.
Despite some differences, such as structure, size and product offerings, it was enlightening to learn that both Onderlinge ‘s-Gravenhage and Univé Dichtbij share many of the same realities we face at Åland Mutual. As smaller-sized mutuals, we often operate without extensive teams or considerable budgets and this forces us to be smart with resources and collaborative.
With Onderlinge ‘s-Gravenhage, I was particularly impressed by the work they are doing in digitalisation. We have been on a similar journey too and this allowed us to have a meaningful exchange about what we have learned so far – not just in relation to technology itself but ensuring customers are brought along on the journey too.
One of the most rewarding parts of the visit was the feedback we received on our own practices, particularly in the area of mutuality and making members feel like they are the owners of the organisation. At Åland Mutual, we have worked hard get all our members to attend our Annual General Meeting and the feedback we received from Onderlinge ‘s-Gravenhage and Univé Dichtbij was that they found this very inspiring.
During the visit we were introduced to a Dutch-developed tool that streamlines the process of producing reports. For a small-sized mutual like ours, managing the creation and production of multiple reports simultaneously can be labour intensive and such a tool could be a “game changer” and we’ve already started exploring whether it is applicable for our operations.
What made this visit unique was that we left with not only new ideas that we are excited to explore to see whether they can work for our company, but also with the affirmation that our existing strategies are aligned with best practices in other countries – this is very valuable to us.
The young leaders who joined me on the visit also benefitted immensely. The experience was an investment in their development and it was a pleasure for me to see them build their own international network with other mutual companies and see their readiness to carry our mutual values into the future.
Our thanks to ICMIF for facilitating this visit and we look forward to continuing the conversations that we started with Onderlinge ‘s-Gravenhage and Univé Dichtbij, opening up the dialogue to include more colleagues from our organisations as we focus on exploring more specific topics together in the future.
