Please note this article was published before OEE Consulting and gobeyond joined forces to become Gobeyond Partners.

Faye worked in the insurance sector, in both the UK and Singapore, for ten years before joining us as a Senior Consultant. In our latest consultant profile she shares her experience of working at OEE Consulting, and her insight into how the insurance sector will evolve in the coming years.

This article continues our profile series of the team who work in OEE Consulting, which has so far interviewed Leo Della-Moretta, Annie Glover, Sylvain Poncet, Beulah Selvaraj, Vishnu Sivakumar and Helen Meskell.

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Role: Senior Consultant
Location: Cheltenham
Experience: Financial Crimes Compliance Officer (APAC regional lead) and APAC Regional Compliance Manager at AIG in Singapore; Regional Operations Manager, SE Region at Allianz Insurance in the UK
Education: Bachelor of Law and Management Studies (LLB) from the University of Leeds; Advanced Diploma in Insurance (ACII) from the Chartered Institute of Insurance; Post Graduate Certificate in Coaching and Development from Portsmouth University
Worked with OEE Consulting since: October 2017

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Describe OEE Consulting in three words.
Inspiring, supportive, stimulating.

What was your route into consulting with us?
I worked in the insurance sector for ten years and always wanted to try my hand at consultancy. I got in touch with the company having met two of the Directors during a presentation they gave to a previous company I worked for. The pitch was impressive.

OEE Consulting’s down-to-earth, personable style and clear breadth of business experience made them stand out.

I could imagine myself working with the people presenting, and I thought ‘I’d like to work for OEE Consulting one day’. I got in touch with them when I was thinking of returning home to the UK after two years of living and working in Singapore. I applied for a role, completed the assessment process, and happily was offered a position as a Senior Consultant.

What has surprised you most about OEE Consulting since joining?
I had heard about how competitive a career in consulting could be and I was really surprised by how supportive everyone at the company is. If you ever ask for help (on any level), you are quite literally flooded with offers of support. It sounds corny, but you genuinely get the feeling that everyone is in it together at OEE Consulting. People want to see you succeed and when you think about it, it makes sense – if we each succeed personally then the whole company succeeds.

What are some of the challenges you have been addressing within the insurance sector?
I have had the opportunity to work with a number of clients who have recognised that to remain competitive and meet ambitious long-term growth targets, they need to get the operational basics right first. This is a common challenge in the insurance sector and we have worked with client teams to re-design and implement new operating models to enable their future success.

The challenge of a recent project was to help the Marketing division of a large global insurance client create capacity whilst increasing the value they add to the business. We first worked to understand existing cost to serve and performance levels and benchmarked this against their competitors and voice of the customer feedback in order to identify opportunities for improvement. Other key elements to re-designing the operating model included understanding the existing and future services to be offered, reviewing where and at what level work should be undertaken, and reviewing and improving key customers journeys.

Tell me how you see the insurance industry changing in the next ten years?
The market continues to undergo significant change, and with this of course comes both challenge and opportunity. Over the next ten years we are likely to see a persistent trend of high competition with the number of market players increasing initially as more Insurtech and Fintech entrants disrupt the market and disaggregate the insurance value chain.

The leading brands of today won’t be the same in ten years’ time.

Mergers and acquisitions will continue at pace and companies will be forced out of the market as fewer and fewer will be in a position to meet the ever-increasing regulatory burden (particularly around customer protection and regulatory capital), successfully leverage automation and AI, and remain profitable.

Customer demands and expectations will evolve and put ever-growing pressure on the sector. Customers will continue to demand greater simplicity, transparency, convenience and speed in their insurance dealings. The players that will remain in the future will be those who have enabled customer centricity through operations model re-design and significant changes to their internal structures. With this often comes the need to tackle complex antiquated legacy systems that are fundamental to key processes such as underwriting and run at high cost.

What do you find most rewarding about working as a management consultant?
It is rewarding to work alongside clients, to coach and support people and help teams and companies improve the way they work.

Coaching is a real passion of mine and I get the same reward from working as a management consultant as I do from coaching.

What do you wish other people knew about your work?
I think it is important to recognise the energy and effort that goes in to connecting with the client teams we work with. In order to successfully implement change, whether implementing a new operating model or a new work flow system, there is nearly always some form of cultural shift that is required in the teams and companies that we work with. We help our clients evolve their cultures, their leadership and their thinking – so having high emotional intelligence is essential in this line of work.

Is there any advice you would give to a person who is starting out in your chosen career?
To both succeed in and enjoy a career in consultancy I’d say you need to be persistently curious, open minded and flexible, and prepared to be challenged to work outside of your comfort zone.

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About Faye

Faye has over ten years’ experience in change and operations improvement across the UK and Singapore. She is experienced in implementing international change programmes and working effectively across diverse and international teams.

Her recent projects have included improving the global management of Financial Crimes risks for a large insurer and improving value and capacity in the Marketing division of a large global insurance client.

In her spare time Faye enjoys taking dance classes, baking, and planning trips to her favourite country – Japan.