Liz Green:

Welcome ladies and gentlemen, to the second of our ICMIF Mutual Leaders Insight webinar. I’m absolutely delighted today to be in the virtual company of three of our prominent leaders from three of our prominent organisations. We have Tracy MacDonald from Trillium in Canada. We have Mark Palmberg from GF in Denmark, and we have Seada van den Herik from Onderlinge ‘s-Gravenhage over in Netherlands. Welcome to you all and thank you very much for participating today. We’re going to kick off our session with just a couple of introductions and we’re going to start off with Tracy. Tracy, welcome and please give us a bit of background about you and your wonderful organisation.

Tracy MacDonald:

Thank you, Liz. And it’s wonderful to be here with the esteemed panel members, so thank you for having me. Yeah, so hailing from Canada this morning in my home office and I am the CEO of Trillium Mutual Insurance Company, and we are a small regional player in Ontario, located in southwestern Ontario. We’ve been in existence for about 140 years, and we are an amalgamation of two smaller companies. Our main focus and our strategic plan focuses on agricultural insurance and very regional in nature. We’re licenced within one province in Canada. We have 15,000 policy holders, about 87 million in Canadian dollar premiums and 82 employees. So small but mighty as we like to say, and very niche focused in our product line.

Liz Green:

Wonderful. Thank you so much Tracy and welcome. Mark, over to you, some introductions. Thank you.

Mark Palmberg Steele:

Yes, thanks for having me. So my name is Mark Palmberg Steele. I am the CEO of GF Insurance here in Denmark. GF is not 140 years old, we are only almost 60, so founded in 1967 actually as a protest movement against the rising prices in the automotive insurance market. And ever since, export the full product portfolio within the private line. So we are a non-life full provider within private line insurances, and about five or six years ago we started commercial. So we are the seventh largest non-life insurance company here in Denmark and around 350,000 members with a network of distribution channels all over Denmark, 48 offices we have in small Denmark and actually is driving around the business with 800 people. That’s the characteristics.

Liz Green:

That’s wonderful. Thank you so much Mark. How wonderful, a protest against the rising cost of automotive. Love that. We’ll come back to that later. And last, but definitely not least over to you Seada. Welcome.

Seada van den Herik:

Thank you Liz. And it’s really nice to be lost because I think our organisation is somewhat in between, first of all our age, we’re about 125 years old, just over 125 years old. So that’s somewhere in between. We’ve got 130 people in our company and we’ve got 300,000 members of on the Onderlinge ‘s-Gravenhage. And if you don’t mind, I understand that Onderlinge ‘s-Gravenhage is really hard to pronounce outside of the Netherlands, so we can call it OG, that’s maybe easier to pronounce. And we’re a true life insurance company and so we have a quite large balance sheet of 3 billion and we have a revenue of 250 million and we just doubled our revenue in the last year, so that was really great. It was gross premiums, but that was really great. And we do have a focus on senior members, so I think we can talk to that a little bit later. So we shifted from more a general insurance company to really trying to be the insurance company or the financial institution for all the 50 plus people in our country.

Liz Green:

Wonderful, thank you so much. And yes, from here on in just to stop embarrassing myself, I’ll definitely refer to your organisation as OG. Thank you so much Seada. So obviously the world is continuing to change, lots and lots of change and innovation and that brings with it lots of risks and opportunities for our organisation. So guys, I’m really curious to explore with you, how are you responding at the moment to these changes and these transformations in your organisation? What are the biggest risks and what are the biggest opportunities that you’re seeing? Perhaps if I start on that one, maybe perhaps with Mark.

Mark Palmberg Steele:

Yeah, sure. Happy to share something about that. So definitely also in Denmark, we are definitely seeing a quite transformative environment we are navigating. I think that’s probably the same situation for many of us. So actually how, if I may start from an overall topic, actually following the conference in Rome, the ICMIF conference in Rome, year before last year, we actually came home and more or less within a half a year we started the strategy process for GF insurance strategy starting first January 24 and going forward. So we actually spent the year following establishing our core business strategy around that transformation.

So from our point of view, we actually incorporated the whole transformative agenda. It’s primarily driven on digitalisation, so I think that’s a topic most of us can relate to. But definitely as we hear from OG, so GF has doubled in size the last eight years, organic growth, which always put some, what do you call it, backlog of digitalisation and are we on front of where the market is moving? So we actually incorporated it into our strategy on a whole IT infrastructure and digitalisation, putting the members’ requirements in the centre of that and having them drive the transformation. So it’s a regulatory, it’s digital, and in the sum of that, which hopefully that’s the plan, will benefit in our members feeling that change. That’s how we coped with it from an overall perspective.

Liz Green:

And how does that resonate with Tracy and Seada? Does any of what Mark said apply in your organisations? How are your transformations going?

Tracy MacDonald:

Yes, absolutely. I think very similar to what Mark is saying, we’re working through a three-year strategy right now. So 23 to 26 did attend the conference in Rome as well. So it allowed for some different integrations. We have four pillars in our strategy beginning with our people. The other three pillars are distribution, our members and our financials and technology enables all of those things. So yeah, we embarked on a full system, a change transformation a few years back and implemented the Guidewire suite of products just to be able to be agile and be able to add on and have the digitisation strategy that Mark speaks about because there’s so much change and it’s so rapid.

And as we all know, our customers sort of put us at the centre and compare us to every other industry. And we were behind, certainly here in Canada, so I’m not sure globally if everyone’s experiencing that, but people and our members expect the same service and the same sort of level of real time response that they receive from other industries. So we wanted to ensure that we had the platform in place that we could add on. And certainly 2023, 2024 is just exploding with respect to artificial intelligence and what that is going to mean for our organisation. So we’ll probably talk about that a little bit later, but certainly our strategy from a technology perspective, but we always talk about technology enabling the other parts of our strategy.

Liz Green:

And how about you, Seada?

Seada van den Herik:

Well, I was in Rome as well, so I thought it was a real great conference and also inspiring to see all the other mutuals. I thought it is really different than the more commercial insurance companies. And I think we took that also, I took it home and we embedded it in our new strategy, it’s called OG 2030. So we have a slightly longer horizon, and that’s our strategy to become the financial institution in the Netherlands to go through for elderly like 50 plus and 70 plus. So I think in the last two years we created a few new products, especially targeted and platforms especially targeted at our audience group. And we made a very bold move because we transferred some of our pension portfolio, our business pension portfolio, which was a 300 million transfer or deal, but it really enabled us to focus on individual pension buildup and individual pension. And that’s where our growth came from. So I think it really paid off to have focus in your company and focus not on companies, but on individuals.

Liz Green:

Wonderful. That’s fantastic. And it’s great to hear about the OG 2030 vision and strategy.

Seada van den Herik:

But you also, you asked about risks and maybe we didn’t address all the risks. I think, and there’s probably for all of us, I think it also came out of Rome that the climate is still a big risk, especially for non-life. I think it’s slightly more for life, but especially for non-life. But then on the life side, there is also huge risk related to the more flux in the interest rates that we’re seeing and the long-term interest rates, short-term, the inverse interest rates. So it’s really interesting times where we see a 3% increase in interest rates within one year or even last quarter, a 1% interest drop within one quarter, which is really volatile and challenging for insurance companies with a long horizon.

Liz Green:

Absolutely. And how is it over at GF, Mark?

Mark Palmberg Steele:

Yeah, so actually quite similar to what Tracy was summing up. So we have actually five pillars in our strategy and to address that topic, product, so the right products to the right price is also part of that strategy. And obviously with all the climate we are seeing and all the prevention activities, which we are lucky enough that that’s very high on our members’ radar or interest field if you want. So the prevention scheme around how we can prevent to the extent possible, but definitely also looking into how the pricing and how that reflects, because obviously looking into what we are seeing and in Denmark, and I think that’s not just a Danish thing, that’s a worldwide thing. 2023 has been a quite challenging year when looking at weather situation and weather events in general. And we have actually in the Danish market, been one of the only ones actually struggling to keep our prices unchanged compared to previous years.

We do see a lot of activity in the market with increasing prices to cope with those changes. And obviously that’s also something we need because one part is to, as we were established, to make sure that our members get the most value for money, i.e. keeping the prices as stable as possible, but that core fundamental being a mutual being, the way we drive GF and run GF is challenged based on what we see on climate changes among other things. So that’s definitely on the risk side, I fully agree that’s something which is high on our radar and also being built in one of the pillars in our strategy.

Liz Green:

And how about you, Tracy? What’s high on your risk register at the moment?

Tracy MacDonald:

Sure. Many things. I just want to attach onto the climate conversation for sure. Most definitely an issue in Canada as well. And I think even more, something that I think about more than climate change is climate variability and we’re just seeing really, really strange and drastic changes even in a day in Canada in the winter, we had a massive thunderstorm yesterday and last night, and it’s just so strange when we’re used to sort of strapping on the skis and going to the hill. It’s just not the same when we’re in the middle of a thunderstorm.

So the variability and the unpredictability. So our niche in agriculture, certainly our number one risk and our biggest concern is large scale agricultural fires. So that’s certainly more what’s affecting Trillium from a risk perspective. But we’re not immune to climate change because we participate in the reinsurance market. So this is affecting us sort of globally in Canada as well in significant severe events. But I think it’s that variability and that you can have such drastic change even in a day, in a week and a month that’s affecting us that we’re not quite prepared for and how to sort of manage and manoeuvre around that.

Liz Green:

Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of quantifying these risks, is that a challenge for you guys because it’s not easy there getting the right data and getting the right information from past experiences because the world’s changing so much. Is that an issue?

Seada van den Herik:

It is because I think as insurance we always look to the past to actually calculate a risk, and now the past might not be that good a predictor for the future anymore. So I think that really makes it challenging for us. The more volatility, the more difficult to actually estimate what the risks are going to be and to price them correctly into the future. So I think yeah, that poses a challenge and I think, sorry. No, and I think if you look at the climate risk, we don’t have that much climate risk in our products ourselves, but we do have them in our assets, but there’s a lot of regulation in Europe and the CSRD coming up, so we have to find a lot of information on the carbon emissions and the ESG scores, et cetera. I think it’s really good, but it’s also really hard because we looked at different ESG scores and then from different providers and we couldn’t find the correlation. So it’s really hard to see what are the right scores that you can really trust on for doing the right things.

Liz Green:

Absolutely. Mark and Tracy?

Mark Palmberg Steele:

Yeah, if I should add, because I think a little different perspective because I think those changes which we are seeing and as we just heard, it not necessarily is the past the right way to predict the future anymore. So I think that requirements to us acting as CEOs in our companies and with all our management teams navigating, and I hate the word, but the agility we need to navigate in this rapidly changing environment actually puts more requirements to us in our positions and our management teams.

And that has put perspectives into management reporting, are our reporting systems good enough, are we able to quickly enough adjust products? One thing is to adjust price, but as we are a little reluctant if we can, do we have an agile organisation to cope with things moving faster, changes coming faster? That is also, speaking on the strategy, that is also some is high because that both is opportunity and is a risk. And that is something we work quite a lot with in the management team here in GF to more or less change. And that’s back to the transformation to change and increase the agility, if you can say it that way around.

Liz Green:

And Tracy, in terms of the discussions at your management team level, are you concerned about agility as well in terms of being able to respond to these ever-changing risks and lack of data really to help from the past?

Tracy MacDonald:

Yeah, yeah, I think it’s a real challenge because that’s how we’ve always priced risk and always looked at sort of things by looking in that rear view mirror and things just are so different. As leaders of financial institutions we’re so embedded in our models and our structures and the way that we do things and this has worked for a century sort thing. So trying to change our mindset to figure this might have to sort of be thrown out and really reinvent what this looks like to predict and assess risk, specifically how it relates to translating those risks into the financial parts of things I think will be dramatically different. Certainly don’t have the answers, but I think it’s a good conversation to start thinking about the way it’s always been done is maybe not going to work for the future.

Liz Green:

Absolutely. And it’s something that ICMIF has taken really seriously. We’ve been working, I’m sure at least one or two of about some pilot work that we’ve been doing with Swiss Re in terms of looking at quantifying climate risk. It’s not an easy nut to crack at all, but we’re certainly up for the challenge and ICMIF members will be hearing a lot more about that in coming months. But yeah, we have an ISDG calculator that we’re working on with that exact focus in mind, how do we quantify this risk?

How do we help our members to get this data that’s all over the place in lots of different forms, get it in the right format and then create some kind of benchmark within our membership to help you to start to get some of that data that isn’t there at the moment, but do watch this space and we will be talking to you about that in coming months. But again, in a similar sort of vein, what role have you been seeing AI has been playing in terms of your transformation, whether that’s in the past or in your plans in the future? How do you view AI?

And perhaps I’ll start perhaps on this one I’m going to start with Tracy if that’s okay.

Tracy MacDonald:

Absolutely. Sort of see this on both sides. Huge risk, huge opportunity. So our organisation, we’ve focused on it internally more so. We think that the risks if we keep it internal, are maybe a little bit lower and it’s really just an experiment and learn and figure things out, see what’s out there and what can help us sort of move on an efficiency side. So I think that’s been our first sort of venture into it and just trying to figure out what are the big, and it’s absolutely amazing the things that it can do and replace some key parts of things and put people onto different sort of roles that require different levels of thinking. So I think that’s where it’s going to move, but we’re in the very early experiment, learn and test and internally only because we certainly see a lot of risk associated with it as well.

Liz Green:

Yeah, sure. So Seada, are you still focusing just internally or have you been expanding?

Seada van den Herik:

No, we’re just internally. I really like AI. I have an IT background, so in the past I created in the nineties a very small neural network. So I really enjoy the rise of the AI right now and I’m really impressed by the power it has acquired and it’s kind of scary also and it’s a huge opportunity and we’re not using it externally yet. I think in the Netherlands we created with all the insurance companies quite a strict ethics frameworks. So it basically means that whatever AI tooling you’re using, you carry the responsibility of the outcome of the AI tooling as an insurance company. And that’s kind of a challenge because how to test the outcome of the AI tooling if you put it externally. So I think for us that’s also to look at it more internally and I think we’re still in the awareness phase.

So we’ve started a few workshops to actually make people aware of the power of AI and what that means to their job and how they could include it and actually to speed up their job. So I think it’s really, it’s looking at the knowledge workers and the AI tooling that’s out there right now can help them with doing the first 70, 80% within 10 minutes and then they can add their own knowledge skills and expertise and judgement and controls to it. But we are going to do an IT festival later this year. So we basically said, I think it’s time again to get everybody together and make IT fun again. So we’re going to talk about actually better use of our existing systems because we have a lot of powerful systems in Office 365 and we’re basically only using half of all the functionality that we have already at our disposals. And we’re also going to look at all the external opportunities and competitors of what they’re doing, but we want to make it fun. So we’re going to call it an IT festival.

Liz Green:

Wonderful. Yes, putting the fun back into IT. Absolutely. That’s a great idea. And so how about you Mark, what role, are you still focusing internally on in terms of your IT, sorry, your AI adventure or is it more for you guys?

Mark Palmberg Steele:

So I think AI is this topic which I’m actually more afraid of not experimenting with it and risk to miss all the opportunities. I can mirror what we are hearing here from both of you on the risk and potential side, but from our side, I think if I should try and be a little concrete because I very much agree to what’s just being said here. And so we work with it in two work streams if you want. So part of that digitalisation in our core strategy, we are looking into a potential core system change within our insurance platforms and the whole vendor dialogue we’ve had during 2023. I think we have had more than 40 vendor dialogues with different vendors on different systems and not one of them have not incorporated some AI into those solutions that we are seeing today. So we have one kind of work stream on the digitalisation where AI is being served as part of what we are looking at implementing in that different IT sphere.

And then the other one is also internally as very similar to what we hear from OG and Trillium. So it’s more the curiosity driving from a efficiency agenda. So can we make processes more efficient in some sort of way? We do live to understand data, this is data to some extent. That’s what we live in, pricing our products and navigating in the business in general. So we should have good background for doing that. So we have a very small team, one or two good colleagues who’s trying to experiment with various opportunities. So we are in the curious phase, but do know that when we look into all those digitalisation and system changes, we are looking into a lot of things will also benefit us that way around.

Liz Green:

Wonderful. So a nice mix of curiosity and fun and a bit of measured caution as well around AI, quite right for our cooperative and mutual insurers. And do look out, we’re going to be issuing a survey in coming weeks all on the AI transformation subject for our members. We are quite keen to get to aggregate some data to find out where you all are, what you’re up to, and how ICMIF can support you in terms of looking at that as a risk and an opportunity. So watch this space for that area as well.

The other area that I know all three of you as leaders are very, very committed to is obviously our people and how cultural transformation eats any strategic transformation for breakfast. So have you got any comments in terms of all this change that you’re navigating at the moment and how you are at the moment dealing with it in terms of your culture and your people? And I’m going to start therefore with Seada, if that’s okay with you. What’s happening at OG?

Seada van den Herik:

Well, I think with our new strategy, we actually made a drawing of a new strategy in a tree and then we started talking, okay, we want to get out of the industrialised age more into this people oriented organic age. And then we said, well, if we draw our own organisation, why is it always going to be like this rectangular organisation chart? Very hierarchic. So we also changed the way we draw our organisation. So we now have an organisation three form, and it is really interesting what it does to people. So it took us two or three weeks to actually draw it out. And now that we have it, people are like, everybody understands what’s in there and how it works. So it’s really interesting. So we’ve got three big branches was like for more commercial, more administrative heart and more the financial side. And then we’ve got a lot of birds coming on and those are our members we were trying to attract.

And then in the trunk there’s actually the board in the middle and then there’s the support staff and on top of it is IT and information management much more close to the business. And then we’ve got two squirrels. They are a second line and third line of defence because they can go through all of the organisation. We’ve got the wise owl that’s actually representative for our supervisory board. And then I thought maybe the best one was also we have the sun, which is actually all our supervisory bodies like the central bank and the auditor, et cetera. I think the central bank was very pleased by seeing that. They said, well, we’ve never been portrayed as a sun, but I said, well, you shine your light on us, so that’s why you’re there. But upfront I was a little bit nervous about it because I thought, isn’t this going to be too childish?

But I think the recipient in the organisation was really good because it took out a lot of the hierarchical structure. It really showed we’re one organisation, it’s not like we’re against each other or competing. And so it was really helpful and we added a little bit to it, said, well, okay, but we are in a strict regulated business. So we can’t just be organic everything. We are very strictly regulated. So what we did is we created 10 boards and we said there are basically board meetings because there’s always going to be one of the statutory board members there, one or two. So every decision we’re going to take there is going to be an official decision. It doesn’t have to go up, so there’s going to be a board member management and the experts and in this specific area we can take the decision all at once.

Of course we need very good preparation and we need good dialogue and good checks and balances by the second line, but then we can take the decision so we can move much faster. And we started this at the 1st of January and we see so much more ownership in the organisation because now all of a sudden they’re in charge of the workflow to get the decision done and they’re actually in the meeting where the decision gets done. So it was exciting time, but I think it’s really working out really nicely. So we made the organisation more flatter and more engaged and also more organic into this new age of nature.

Liz Green:

That sounds so exciting, Seada. And guys, Mark and Tracy, any response to that? What a wonderfully creative, empowering, clear decision making, faster decision making, cultural change. How’s that resonating with your organisations?

Tracy MacDonald:

I love it. I think that’s absolutely fantastic and I love the sun as the regulatory bodies in the central bank. I think that’s fantastic. Certainly people are at the centre of our organisation as well. And I’m going to take some of those things away because I think their need, I think we still sort of have the hierarchy org chart and how it’s described, but coming from a small organisation, that’s what makes it sort of great. We don’t have those sort of hierarchies in place. Certainly I’m accessible to anybody anytime in sort of that walk around nature. A couple of things that we’ve done recently to sort of be more agile in our cultural journey is having, we used to have sort of the historic cultural surveys and engagement surveys and those sorts of things, and it’s a snapshot once in time. So we’ve moved to more of an employee net promoter score and having more continual and direct feedback.

And with that, we have a group of people called our Employee Leadership Council that meet regularly and they’re the voice of the organisation to management. So if there’s someone that wants to share something and they help us solve for problems too, things that are coming up through that employee net promoter score so we can react and have better outcomes for our people. Because at the end of the day, our people are everything, they are.

Who support our members. So as long as our people are in a good place and able to make decisions and move forward, then that’s going to be for a good member experience. And that’s at the end of the day what we’re here about. So I think all of that is good. And one of the huge advantages of having a small organisation is we meet with our entire staff team every month and so we can transparently share our strategy and what’s working, what’s not working, how are we challenged, and then everyone feels that they’re a part of that, they can share and know exactly what’s going on in the organisation financially or other, and how they can have a part and a role in improving some of those areas or celebrating our successes.

So that is one huge advantage of being a small organisation. Certainly there’s challenges with it as well, but I think it certainly helps. But I love the description of the tree, so I think it’s probably how we behave, but not necessarily how we’ve depicted it.

Liz Green:

Thank you. Tracy, how about you, Mark?

Mark Palmberg Steele:

Yeah, I also agree the tree thing is very creative and unfortunately nothing that I can match, but I love the idea. So very mirroring a lot of what Tracy just said, even though that we might be slightly bigger in GF, it is similar, we have one of the pillars in our strategy is obviously also the people, not necessarily to dive more into that. So I’ll do a perspective and slightly different way because I think that what we try to do also by the way, working with the net promoter, net promoter score as part of our new strategy to try to incorporate more of the engagement. But what we did was lately, so we coupled the strategy and the strategy execution with all those changes. So definitely we are seeing that running an insurance company here in Denmark today is obviously, and I think that goes for all of us is not the same as for 20 years ago.

There’s a lot of new regulation, a lot of new regulation is coming, changes are coming, transformation is coming. So the whole part of navigating through all those changes in the eyes of our employees, that is very high in the agenda to equip our leaders with the right toolboxes and try to educate and try to work with them, coping with the strategy, how do they take on the strategy? So our business strategy for 24 to 28 was actually approved by the board early 23. So we actually used a lot of 23 with our leaders and actually do a soft launch in 24 to get that under the skin, to get that behavioural changes that we need to start the dialogue with our leaders who then can take that to all their leader teams, et cetera, et cetera, to cope with the changes to navigate. And we embedded a lot of behavioural insights into how we want to change the way we do things.

And that’s also part of the strategy execution plan, if you want, to start asking ourself how can we do things a little different tomorrow than we did the day before? And then slowly kind of embed that into the organisation via the leaders and via try to change behaviour and actually work with habits. Start tiny and how we can work with habits and make those changing habits thereby drive the change via our leaders. So those programmes have launched here early 24, which we are very excited to see the results of that going through 24.

Liz Green:

I’m absolutely sure that all of your employees across your organisations must be so inspired by what the three of you have shared in terms of your cultural ambitions and the work that you’re doing. They all sound like amazing initiatives and organisations. Just coming back to maybe to the last five minutes of our dialogue, one of the big things that came out of the Rome conference, which was great to see you all at by the way, was that the need to leverage the strength of our amazing network across ICMIF. We have more than 200 organisations willing and able to open their playbooks and to share information. And so the next conference is actually going to be called Collaborating With Purpose, and that’ll be in Argentina later this year. So I’m curious from your perspectives, as great leaders and great advocates for the ICMIF Network, how have you been collaborating with ICMIF members since you’ve joined? And have you got any advice for any other members when they’re thinking about whether they should about the real value of collaboration with other non-compete organisations in the network? Tracy, shall I start with you?

Tracy MacDonald:

Yeah, sure. And I think the thing that resonated for me the most on this is that we don’t have access to sort of global organisations where we can learn what’s happening in other sides of the globe and follow sort of that, like you said, that non-competitive way. So ICMIF has been a great support to us in trying to match or pair us with organisations around the world that are similar to us in size and scale because that’s important and specific to the areas in our niche that we want to focus on. And then we can learn much like other, like I said, global organisations do learn from other areas of the world and where areas may be further advanced than we are. So we’ve got fantastic relationships with organisations. We’ve actually had, we’ve invited people to our organisation and we’ve reciprocated and visited back and we’ve learned and we’ve applied some of the things directly in our strategy with organisations that have similar size, scale and products.

And then I further embedded that and introduced people within the organisation so they have regular connects. And our virtual world now makes that so much easier just to say, okay, well we’re going to try that, Trillium, you’ve tried this, we’re going to try this in our organisation, and then we’ll come back in a couple of months to say, okay, we ran into this, you’ve already been through this, what did you learn from it? And so that’s been fantastic and most definitely connections that we wouldn’t have been able to make. So wonderful that ICMIF is able to support and ICMIF certainly knows us as members of the organisation and can easily say, you would work well with this organisation. And it’s been bang on.

Liz Green:

Thank you Tracy. What a wonderful ringing endorsement. How about from your perspective, Mark and Seada? Have you had any experience of collaborations that you’d like to share?

Mark Palmberg Steele:

Yes, I’m happy to start. So I’ve been in my current role for two years and thereby the ICMIF conference in Rome was my first conference. So I’m still the new guy in the class to some extent. But I was, to be honest, and a lot of what Tracy is saying really resonates with me as well. I was, to be honest, literally blown away of that conference with all those similarities that we are seeing. So in Denmark we have a really, really strong connection with all the other mutual companies in Denmark. But being amongst the largest of the mutuals in Denmark, that inspiration of meeting similar sized or many larger as well from all around the world and having good conversations during the conference last time was very, very inspirational.

And I was blown away over how much similarities there are in where we are on our journey. So even though that we are almost, we are not even 60 years old yet, speaking with good colleagues on some of the meetings, being much older in their kind of lifespan as a company, giving a lot of insights, which we definitely can bring back home and would definitely like to also obviously give back. So I’m definitely looking forward to Argentina as well later this year to pick up and network because those relationships and that network is very, very valuable for us in GF.

Liz Green:

Thank you so much, Mark. And the final word from you, Seada.

Seada van den Herik:

Oh, thank you. Well, I’ve got a two part, I think ICMIF was very useful for me when I started with OG six years ago. I think we met in person then in Den Haag in our old offices, but you very soon introduced me to a lot of other mutual companies and helped us to clear out and we started discussions on branding of mutuals and I think that’s been very helpful for us in the Netherlands. And it also had a spinoff to branding mutuals better in the Netherlands. So now we actually created together with Unive and Achmea, two of our big mutual brothers in the Netherlands, or sisters, I don’t know actually for insurance companies, but peers. But we have a combined podcast now with all the mutual insurance in the Netherlands to actually explain, okay, we’re all very different, but there’s something at the heart of us that the cooperative and mutual insurers kind of share.

So I think that’s really nice. It indirectly came out of this whole marketing trend that ICMIF created. And the other one was I really enjoyed Rome. I was really impressed by the massive impact that mutual insurance have worldwide and also the massive impact that some of our colleague insurers around the Pacific are already noticing on the climate impact on their actually level of damage. And also the United Nations being there working together with the mutual insurances. To me it was a wake-up call, this is really serious about the climate and you know it, but if you’re there with all those people, you also feel it and that changes your behaviour. So for me that was also part of the impact of Rome. So thanks for that.

Liz Green:

Well thank you and thank you the three of you for such wonderful ringing endorsements of our network. We do our best to bring our network together, but it’s you guys at the end of the day that make it happen and you are always so open and welcoming to other members and I really appreciate that. And just to jump onto the point about marketing and brand, we are having our very first marketing and brand forum, which starts on, I think it’s this next on the 7th of March.

So those of you who are interested in continuing a colourful journey in what sometimes gets called a rather grey industry, which I don’t agree with. But however, if you want to look at what other members are doing in their marketing and brand arena, just like Seada said, to get some inspiration, some ideas, please jump on that. It’s all part of your member benefits as being part of ICMIF. So we’ve talked a lot about transformation today, but I think that that was needed. I think that there is a real appetite out there at the moment to share transformation journeys. We have a few more transformative forums ahead. Seada?

Seada van den Herik:

Yes, Liz, I wanted to ask you a question because congratulations, you are the chairwoman now of ICMIF.

Liz Green:

Thank you.

Seada van den Herik:

So how has your first period been?

Liz Green:

It’s been wonderful. I actually officially pick up the mantle in Buenos Aires in November. But yes, so this is a transition period where Shaun has very generously stepped back and let me continue to run the business, but he’s still there in the wings looking out for me, giving me excellent mentoring and guidance. And the great news is that he’ll continue to work alongside me for a couple of years on a part-time basis. So we’re not losing Shaun, but we are gaining me as a new leader and to give it a fresh new look, but obviously building on the amazing work that Shaun’s achieved for ICMIF. And that’s just been again about galvanising and collating all the wonderful work that our members do. But thank you, Seada.

Well, it’s just down to me to say thank you. We look forward to hearing comments and questions from the rest of the membership. And there will be more of these wonderful ICMIF mutual leader insights webinars coming your way during the rest of this year. So just want to say thank you again to our wonderful panellists. Have a great day and members have a great day. Looking forward to seeing you hopefully in Argentina.

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