“Our ambition is to be able to support our clients on key risks topics before they have even asked the question”
Michele Williams, Global Head of Allianz Risk Consulting (ARC) explains how the tasks and profile of ARC consultants are evolving to respond to an ever-changing risk environment driven by technology, digitalization, regulation and sustainability concerns. What will remain at the heart of ARC though is technical expertise which is highly valued by customers and AGCS underwriters alike.
Q (Question): Risk consulting and engineering services are key elements of AGCS’s offering for customers. What is the essence of Allianz Risk Consulting from your view?
Michele Williams: Whenever you ask someone about the value that Allianz Risk Consulting brings, their first answer is typically “expertise”. Indeed, we have a tremendous amount of technical expertise and know-how in our ARC team across AGCS’s lines of business, and supporting many and diverse industry types, including areas like renewable energy, cyber or the ever more relevant ESG risks. We are a truly global team consisting of 260 risk consultants across all our six regions, and this combined with our LoB expertise also means we can leverage global hubs of expertise to support clients anywhere in the world, creating both efficiency and flexibility.
In a world which is fast-changing and volatile we constantly need to update our knowledge and expertise and adapt quickly to changing needs. We need to be aware of and react to both existing and emerging trends, so we are in a good position to respond to future challenges and opportunities. Our ambition is to be able to support our clients on key risk trends before they have asked the question or even identified an issue.
Q: How is ARC supporting AGCS’s core insurance business for the benefit of customers?
Michele Williams: In a nutshell, we are active across three core areas: Advising underwriting on the quality of our clients from a risk perspective through reviews, engineering surveys working closely with our clients; additional consulting advice and services to other teams across the business, and by providing external support and services to clients and brokers. As working effectively across all our lines of business is absolutely crucial, we are continually looking for ways to collaborate and share expertise to ensure the flexibility and technical expertise that our clients deserve.
Furthermore, to drive our future focused approach, we have a digital transformation team focusing on digital solutions to support clients and underwriting across many parts of the risk landscape. We have some great digital solutions built in collaboration with underwriting that are already providing a positive impact on a daily basis, and some great training and support modules designed to help our clients across different areas of risk. Last but not least, we are looking to widen our service offering for customers, in particular in the area of climate resilience services to help clients to better understand their exposures to extreme weather and disaster hazards in order to protect their sites effectively.
Q: What is your approach in identifying emerging risks trends?
Q: At the start of 2023, you introduced a ‘Voice of the Customer’ program to gather feedback after each interaction – what insights has this generated and what actions are you taking to be more customer focused in future?
Michele Williams: Collecting customer feedback has been important to us for a number of years as this gives us an opportunity to understand what we do well and how we can improve, and act instantly to address the feedback, rather than wait for the next renewal. ‘Voice of the Customer’ is the next evolution of this customer feedback journey, which we are continually looking to improve.
As an example, our customers are telling us they value our technical expertise and risk mitigation. In addition, they value our openness and the partnership they have with us, as well as our adaptability and our capability to understand their business and deliver services that are targeted to that. This type of feedback is hugely valuable, in that we can then ensure that we are focussing on the right topics and drive concrete actions to address any concerns and further evolve our offering.
Q: What does the future job and skill profile of a risk consultant look like?
Q: What does Allianz Commercial mean for ARC? Will you join forces with risk consultants in other Allianz operational entities? Will you start serving mid-sized companies?
Michele Williams: Our delivery model, both now and looking into the future, has a multi-factor approach, with the expertise of our own team right at the center. There are huge opportunities in working in a truly collaborative approach, be that with other Allianz Group OEs, partnerships with external third parties, or offshore resources all ensuring we have the support in place that our clients effectively.
Against this backdrop, the Integrated Commercial strategy is an excellent opportunity for us to come together with our risk engineering colleagues from Allianz OEs across the globe, to share our expertise and learn from each other. We have always looked for opportunities to collaborate with our risk engineering colleagues in the other OEs, but through this strategy, we are in a position to create a unique and effective global team to support both AGCS’s Large-Corporate and the Mid Corporate business of Allianz OEs and benefit from synergies and a combined expertise across all business sectors.
The risk management challenges of mid-sized businesses are quite different to those of large multinational corporations, for example, in the Mid Corp segment, they deal with much higher volume of clients, and as a result surveys and risk engineering services. However, the bottom line is that combined we have a diverse and knowledgeable network across the world that we can tap into. By effectively bringing the expertise and different perspectives of the different teams, we have a great opportunity and we can offer the market a comprehensive and consistent service offering across the full spectrum of the Commercial segment.