Mansi Hello and welcome to the next episode of our COO podcast, The Rise of the COO, bringing together chief operating officers to tackle pressing topics that matter to COOs in today's world. My name is Mansi Patel. I'm our Capabilities Sector Leader and COO Network Sponsor at Baringa. In today's episode, we talk about how to get the most out of external partnerships. We'll be covering how as a COO you can work best with supply chain and third-party providers. I'm delighted to welcome our guest speaker today, David Greenwood, Chief Operating Officer at IQ. David will share some invaluable leadership advice for COOs on the key to success in operations and in working with external organisations. We're so pleased to have you with us, David. Thank you for joining us.
David Thank you very much, Mansi. It's a pleasure to be here.
Mansi Now David, I know you've worn many hats across your career and you've recently stepped into the COO role. Let's start by asking how that feels for you?
David It's great! I've worked for 47 companies through a very interesting career where I was a consultant and an interim for most of my career. And finally, I am in a permanent job! And people say, why did you do that? And really it's this excitement of, we're here to build a business! And the point about this business is, I'm absolutely fascinated by the idea of it. We're in a very historic industry. Lloyd’s is 200, 300 years old. And what we want to do is move to a place where we use data and technology to drive our business and particularly our underwriting decisions, similar to other financial services. But obviously in Lloyd's, that's quite new. And that enables us to do a couple of things - it really enables us to give our customer base seamless service because we know that if we go back quickly, even with a ‘No’, that’s what they're looking for. And then the second bit is, about getting the most value from the important thing, which is the underwriter. So for me, it was a great business opportunity and a chance to really build that business. It's why I'm here.
Mansi And that's such a ‘close to my heart’ theme around building a business. It's one of the things that really drew me to Baringa when I joined as well. Now, tell us a little bit about IQ, David.
David So we are a specialty underwriter. So we ensure the uninsurable, that's our thing. We have a very set portfolio of insurance that covers things that people might understand like property, cyber, which is obviously in the news, aviation, war and terror, those kinds of things. But because of where we came from, we also are a specialty car insurer where we insure all the more esoteric types of vehicles - like tractors, fleet, buses, taxis, things again that people find difficult to insure. So our approach is still that same thing of trying to insure what other people don't, to provide a great service. Everybody needs insurance, it's actually a really important part of people's lives to give them that security. So it's two businesses in one.
Mansi Great. So it's nice to be part of a business that occupies this space that isn't in the masses and to have that distinction in terms of being special at what you do in underwriting. Now David, you reached out to us. You'd obviously become aware of the Baringa COO network as well. It'd be lovely just to hear what drew you into the Baringa COO network.
David One of the things that's an occupational hazard, as I became a permanent COO, is lots of people want your time and lots of the people want your input. And everybody says, ‘Can you come to this round table? Can you come to this meeting?’ And lots of organisations that provide insight want to have a conversation, want you to come to a conference. And I had a real interest in the Baringa COO Network, around the fact that it seemed very authentic. The kind of COOs - real COOs with real people - the kind of people who are actually my peers and actually probably tackling the same kind of things. I actually knew one of them already in the group, so that gave me a sense of, if you like, a common view and a common conversation. Because a lot of the time you go to these things and actually, you're putting in more than you get out and it felt like it was just something that would work for me as well as the organisation you were dealing with. Authentic, I just keep coming back to - it looks authentic from the outside looking in. And I think that's what personally drives me, is authenticity.
Mansi Well, listen, David, it's absolutely lovely to have you as a part of our network. Now, in your role as COO, you must be looking across the organisation thinking, well, how do I deliver these objectives? How do I use both the talent within as well as external providers and third parties? It'd be great to hear a little bit about how you are thinking that through and what external organisations you draw on.
David So, one of the things that we really focus on in this firm is that - we are underwriters! Our secret source is the underwriters, their relationships, pricing, exposure, management, the really important bit of insurance, actually the stuff that is the real differentiator. And yes, we want to use technology, we want to use data and exploit it. But one of things I'm really quite clear about - we are not a tech firm. And then some of you will still say, ‘oh, I'm a tech firm, we're not really in financial services’. No, we're underwriters. And therefore, if you start from that position, everything else follows. So, most of what we do, our core systems, our tools, but also other things like even our benefits management, we try and say, should we be doing this? Or should we be actually be managing a third party to do it? Who's done more of it, better? Well, we're not trying to learn how to do things. We've only been going for five years. So do we want to be that learning organisation, or do we want to be that organisation that gets those things in and exploits them. And so that's really our position with all of our third-party relationships - is checking should we be doing this ourselves if we're underwriters?
Mansi And that clarity of knowing what you do and what you want to keep doing - to be the best at - I think is so important in organisations. I come across lots of organisations that morph outside of that, and then often look at themselves, going, ‘What have we become in terms of what we're managing?’ Because they've lost the passion for the core of their business as well, which I hear very strongly from you. It would be wonderful to hear what you believe the key elements of building a successful partnership with those organisations looks like, given you're so reliant on them.
David So I think the most important thing is for the partners to understand what you're trying to achieve. Now, there are some partners where we just buy stuff, right? We're probably not going to explain that to the people that supply the photocopier paper. But, for the big organisations, it's trying to get them to understand your objectives, by explaining your objectives and then sitting with them and encouraging them to help you along the journey rather than saying, ‘I'd like to buy a transaction or I'd like to buy a service’ it's ‘I want to get to B or I want get to this area - you've done more of this, you know your world better than us. How would you get there?’ So, one is explaining what you want and... two is asking a question and not necessarily telling our partner organisation the answer. It's one of the things I obsess about - not giving the partner organisation the answer but giving them the question of, ‘How would you do it?’ They still might not [get it] and they might need some help but actually it's giving them the opportunity to input rather than just say, ‘Oh, I want one of these, please!’
Mansi And in asking that question, which I love, because I think it creates some freedom in actually hearing the best, most efficient way to get things done in your organisation, do you see or get much innovation from your partners?
David We do. Some of the time you really have to encourage it because not a lot of our partners are on the same maturity curve that we are, particularly in the Lloyd's world where, you know, they're not light-years ahead of you in maturity. So sometimes they find it really surprising, and you have to really encourage them to say to them ‘No, no, we really would like you to explain it’. And sometimes you have to lead the witness. But yes, I mean, our focus is, we are moving towards contracts now where we reward innovation. If you have a great idea and it makes money we will share that money with you and we are doing a rehash of our major contracts as we go through that cycle and our starting position on all our big contracts with our larger partners is, how can we get our partners to help us achieve our goals and share in the reward associated, rather than I just want to buy a platform that works. And just change the dial, does that make sense?
Mansi Oh, absolutely. It creates a real alignment between the two organisations to get to the right outcome and ultimately both your objectives and their priorities, which I really like the mechanisms through which you're doing that as well. Are there any common oversights or blind spots as a COO you often encounter when dealing with externals? So you've painted the happy path of trying to get innovation and outcomes but where are the lessons learned or the things you would like to not repeat again?
David I think it will always be like this, but there's over expectation. And what you always have to remember is a partner organisation, particularly when it's operating in your own world, and a lot of the partner organisations are quite specialist to Lloyd's, is they're not perfect. None of our companies are perfect, much as we'd all like to say that our world works brilliantly - We all know our job as managers is to manage the imperfect. So they're just the same, but we endow when we do a contract, that it's going to be this perfect company. It's always going to look after you, always going to deliver. And everybody, when they sort of get into a relationship, they always think that's going to happen, And it doesn't really. Yes, we want the best, we should go and expect that not everything is going to work the way you want. You know, people are only human. And I think, particularly with my business colleagues - we do the procurement on behalf of the business, whether that's underwriters or some of the people in the claims teams or in the finance teams or in actuarial teams - it's explaining to them that no partner is perfect, and that actually some of this stuff just isn't going to work the way they think. And it's not because the partner's bad or particularly trying to have one over on us or anything like that. It's just more about the way it is. So trying to manage people's expectations about what the art of the possible is, I think is a big thing that particularly the COOs have to work on, bringing people back to reality.
Mansi I can see that time and time again, often when we go into programs where that mismatch in expectation is often at the rub. And I think catching that early and mitigating it is the art, isn't it? Rather than letting it fester to deal with that.
David Absolutely. The whole thing is about trying to create a relationship where the partner will come and tell you stuff. You know, the worst thing you want is when the partner just doesn't tell you and I have been involved with a partner where they told us at the last minute that it was very difficult to deliver, and that ended up with lots of lawyers and backwards and forwards and actually what you're trying to do is create a culture where it's okay to come to us and tell us this is not working. That's fine. And then we'll work through it because otherwise everybody loses at that point.
Mansi I mean, that's a key one that I think lots of organisations tend to consistently have a blind spot on. So it's great to just hear you describe some of that as well and how you think about it. Are there any additional risks you'd consider when external organisations deliver for you in your business?
David As a regulated firm, we have lots of regulated obligations in terms of risk associated with partners. So operational resilience and making sure those partners can deliver. We have a series of things we have to check about security, about resilience within those organisations. What's becoming more interesting is, in some ways, we have partner organisations. You now start to understand the supply chain is getting more and more extended. There is now a focus on not just the supply chain of who supplies into us, but who's supplying the supplier and on you go. So that's becoming another point. The other risk that's quite interesting now, particularly more so in the pensions industry where I've worked, but it's supplier concentration risk, where we're all on the same platform. So actually it's more of a market thing, but we're in the market. And once we have competitors, if the market sinks, we're all underwater. There's some risk in that. There's also a blessing. So we're beginning to think about how do we work with, allegedly, competitors. I was at a roundtable with five or six COOs in the Lloyd’s market yesterday, discussing how do we collectively use our power over suppliers for them to do what we want them to. So there's a bit of risk but a bit of a blessing on that concentration.
Mansi And just given what you described there, both that dependence on a common platform, the fact that you operate in such a regulated industry as well, I guess it'd be remissive of me not to ask how are you thinking about technologies like AI? How do they sit in the frame of this?
David I always talk about AI, everyone's going to use it whether you tell them to or not. So one of the things about control is, everyone's on ChatGPT, right? It's like your kids doing their homework on ChatGPT. It just happens. So, what we're trying to work out is how do you create within the firm… how do create an environment where it's safe to use this and you don't do a bad thing, rather than controlling saying, ‘do this, do that’. It's actually a safe environment to use it. The thing about AI is everybody thinks about ChatGPT. But there's lots of other AI. So we use slips - although it's usually an email - the Lloyd’s slip, which has the information on. We are using AI to ingest that slip and place the data into our policy admin system. It's a system called Maya that we are implementing. So we are looking for AI opportunities where we can back that streamline process and get the data in a really great shape for the underwriter. For us, that's where AI really plays rather than kind of taking the work off things. It's how can we, to our original vision of what we want to do with the firm, use it for that, recognizing that it's still an emerging technology. So it's using it sensibly. Because there's always a risk with AI, you can spend a lot of money on AI and get nowhere very fast, because there's still lots of people selling stuff.
Mansi I think that's the general sentiment I'm hearing across so many of our clients. How do we spend our money wisely? And how do we spend it on the things required ahead of AI: data, infrastructure, environment? How is all of that in good shape - quality of data as well? Are you seeing similar?
David Yes, I can give you a really interesting example of how we're using AI to manage our third parties. Because we've grown quickly and we have a legacy business, we wanted to get control of our overall contracts and partners. So we're actually just putting in a contract management database. So, at a very basic level, we're using technology just to get control of the data. Now, once we've got control we can start doing some really clever things about ‘Where do we need to spend our time? Which are the contracts that give us value? Which are contracts that gives us risk?’ But until we've actually built the database and got the data in, we're not worried about the AI elements, we just want to get the basics right. And so that's probably a good analogy for how we think.
Mansi Now data is such a hot topic that I hear on the lips of all COOs at the moment, David. I'm perhaps going to take this down a slightly more personal lens, if that's okay with you for a moment. You are now in this role alongside those data challenges. I'd love to hear a little bit about what's been the most rewarding part of your COO role and on the flip side of that, what's the most challenging?
David I think the rewarding bit, and it comes from that background of always wanting to work in transformation and change, is that ability to make a difference. Being COO of so much I've got a very broad brief and if I look back even a year [I've been here two and a half years now] we are so fundamentally different to each of those milestones. Not just as a firm but as a team and how we work and you know there's a great sense of pride when you're very busy, to be able to look back and say... all of this is so much better, back to that business vision. It's a really great opportunity to have enabled and helped people to get there.
Mansi Lovely to hear and I can see the journey you will have gone on as well, particularly when you can see change so tangibly as well. What's been the most challenging?
David It's probably the same thing. So, the pace of change. I think, we are a firm in a hurry and there's lots to do. Again, we've got both kinds of firms. I've never done it where I've got an entrepreneurial firm and a legacy firm on the same book at the same time. So we've both transformations. And so there's so much to do and keeping people focused, keeping them encouraged. And one of the biggest things, I always talk about transformation, it's as much about knowing what not to tackle as it is about actually getting stuff done. I make a hundred priority calls a day and some of those are wrong, always going to be, but you're always constantly saying, is that important? Is it critical or is it merely urgent? And that's a lot of decisions to make and make calls all the time.
Mansi Yeah, how do you balance that personally?
David I do a lot of exercise! We have busy days, you know, this is an entrepreneurial firm and that's not always easy. Personally, I do a lot of exercise, which just takes the edge off this. And I'm very, very strict about my timing. I had a boss 20 years ago, he was chief executive of a bank and he said, “If I can find the time to exercise David, so can you!” I've never forgotten that piece of advice. I’m on call 24/7 because I run the operation, but ultimately, you know, work is work. I'll do some stuff online in the evenings because I'm away from home, but weekends are mine, not work’s.
Mansi I mean, what great disciplines and how lovely to hear that something a CEO said to you 20 years ago stayed with you. I love those nuggets of advice that we hold onto and cherish and then actually follow as well. It's so lovely. Now we've rapidly run out of time on these things, David, but I had a final question for you if that's okay, before we perhaps come to a bit of a ‘takeaway / call to action’. Looking ahead, what's something that you're particularly excited to see evolve in IQ and also in the insurance industry over the next 5-10 years?
David I think it's getting closer to the partners so that it's much more of a proper partnership relationship. The conversation that I've been having over the last few months is about, rather than sort of expecting governance to make the change, getting the partners interested in change. So if I give an example, the blueprint to the digitization of Lloyd's - what do we need the partner organisations to do. If they work, everybody works, rather than worrying about should every single of 130 organisations work. It’s how do the partners become a catalyst for that change? So it's not sort of central governance or 130 people, but actually a limited number of partners can take an industry forward. How do we do that together? Everybody wants us to use them because that's what makes them money. We don't want to do this. So how do we work together to make a market work? And that's real partnership.
Mansi Yeah, I love that. And is there any piece of advice or a key thought on how you could suggest to our listeners today that they should do something like that?
David So I think I come back to - people are an organisation. There's a concept of an organisation, but an organisation is just people, your organisation, my organisation. And therefore to make a success, to make that openness, to be able to talk about and have candid conversations about what goes well, what doesn't work well, it's all about building relationships. To me, partner organisations, their people are part of our people. And those things you do as a leader of people, you have to do with the people in the organisation. Not expected just at the top, but how do I lead through their organisation? It always just comes back to relationships and people. It's just they've got a different badge on.
Mansi So I love how you've just pointed to the importance of people in this journey. They're at the heart of all organisations. And I go back to where this podcast actually started which was you as a person in this role and the impact that you can have and the reasons that you joined. The ability to drive a business forward and help build that business and the people that you need around you to do that as well, whether that's internal talent or actually the external suppliers and partners that you use as well. It's been wonderful to hear some of those insights just around how to get the best out of them. How to make sure it's not all about being perfect in partnership, but being perfect together and being open in those conversations that really resonated with me as something that our listeners should take away today, because that's where so much of those things in organisations can go wrong and get lost in for a period as well before they become good again. So it's been great just to hear you bring that to life for us as well over this podcast. And I think there's just something about how you describe your business being in a hurry. I think will really resonate with others as well, which is lots of organisations are in a hurry, but how you described both the balancing of a business that is both young and entrepreneurial, but also holding a legacy aspect and component, all of that working together and having to hold that in both your hands as the COO I think is really fascinating to hear about as well. Cause that's the moment and place to thrive. How you can manage that as well.
Thank you so much for joining us, David. It's been great to hear your insights and experiences.
David Thanks, Mansi. It's been an absolute pleasure to be here. I'm really very grateful. Thank you.
Mansi And thanks also to our listeners. Please do join the discussion, comment, and tell us what you think. We look forward to welcoming you back for our next episode.
