The best way to earn your stripes in a new role is by demonstrating how you cope in a time of crisis and showing where you truly add value, according to Jaime Swindle (pictured) – and the coronavirus pandemic has been an incredible opportunity for her to do just that in her position as managing director of networks and products for Bravo Group.
Prior to the coronavirus, she said, the most pressing responsibilities of her first few months in this position, she said, were learning all she could about the group’s partners and members, and establishing the best means of supporting its brokers and their customers through working with the right insurer partners. Now, things have moved in a different direction.
“The word ‘unprecedented’ has been used in just about every article I’ve read recently,” Swindle said, “but it really is unprecedented. There is not an experience that I have lived through during my nearly Silver Jubilee anniversary in insurance that has affected every single person, every single household and every single business in some way.”
The pandemic has been something of a baptism of fire, Swindle noted, but has also uniquely proved why being part of a network is important. Even before the lockdown occurred, she said, Bravo Group was finding ways to streamline its contact with its insurers to develop an understanding of what networks exist within the group and why these are so essential. Also, key to this strategy, she outlined, has been looking at how to leverage the tools and expertise available within the group to make sure these were fully available to all its members.
All the work that Bravo Group has been pulling together by working with BIBA, working with its insurer partners, and working with its members to ensure that they all have the most up-to-date information, has emphasised the value of the network, she said.
“The fact that we’ve been able to keep our services going, that we’ve been able to get everybody into home-working, and that we’ve got all of their tech set up means it’s almost business as usual,” she said. “And everyone’s getting used to the new normal, but we’re also making sure that everything we’re doing is keeping our brokers moving and our insurers trading, and their customers are hopefully getting the benefit of all of the work that we’re doing behind the scenes.”
A core service provided has been communications and HR services, Swindle noted, and the support that the Group can offer its members regarding their HR needs is more in demand than ever.
Decisions about staffing, homeworking and managing remote teams have to be made by brokers at this time, she said, and brokers need support in these areas as well on how to support the mental wellbeing of employees during the crisis and practical advice on how to manage cost controls. One of several packs that Bravo Group has created for its members focuses on cyber, she said.
“Some of these brokers will have just a handful of staff,” Swindle said. “They wouldn’t otherwise be able to access an infrastructure giving them all of this information in a very easy way and certainly not when they are doing the things that brokers are brilliant at, which is helping their customers at this time of crisis. And even the larger brokers across our membership are taking advantage of the things that we’re doing for them.”
Looking to the future, Swindle outlined that several of what she would have considered her key priorities before the coronavirus outbreak still remain, including examining Bravo Group’s member propositions to ensure that they are fit, not just for now, but also for the future.
“There’s far more we can do in the HR space,” she said, “and there’s far more we can do in the compliance space. And we can be really smart in the digital consultancy and accounting space, because we’ve got experts and centres of excellence that we can really build on. The priority for me is to look at what do we do brilliantly and what we should be developing in the long term.”
The coronavirus has also led to the identification of new areas of priority for Bravo Group, Swindle said. The group’s HR consultancy service is being opened up across the whole membership to offer support on coronavirus related queries which would not have been available previously; and the group is continuing to find new and relevant ways to support its members and their teams in building resilience, including offering access to its learning and development platform to many members for the first time.
“One of the key areas that we are considering supporting our members with is their business continuity and their business resilience plans, and offering more consultancy around their talent progression and development,” she said. “And I think one of the other areas is with our insurer partners, who are going to potentially be thinking very differently about how they service our memberships moving forward.”
Of course, the hope is that businesses will return to some kind of normality soon, Swindle said, but there remains a great deal of uncertainty as to when this will be and Bravo Group is looking to support its partners and insurers in making the best of what has become a disparate and perhaps slightly broken contact model. The question is how communications can be brought together in a more efficient way, she said, and the group is looking to help identify the opportunities which may arise as a legacy of the coronavirus.
“Given the fact that there aren’t big centres now and teams are in different locations and people’s working hours might be far more flexible especially if the schools are closed,” she said, “how are brokers changing their habits and how are their customers are changing their habits? In light of this crisis, does this become a potential future operating model to some degree? If some things are working, then why would you change them? So, we can explore some of those kinds of proactive operating conversations, which probably weren’t going to be on the list for this year but have been accelerated as a result of this crisis.”
