From claims files to the committee room

Mandate

Make sure the people who carry each obligation to participants have the right relationship with the company, a manageable load and a credible successor.

Outcomes

• Ended agency contracts held by branch service employees, with transition payments and a regraded service role
• Created a sixteen-person named-case team for death and disability claims
• Introduced tested and rostered language allowances for service roles
• Established written successor readiness for each key responsible role

Decisions in context

Kenanggawi recruited me to strengthen the people side of a business whose obligations last for decades. A family takaful certificate may run for twenty years, and the people who service it, assess its claims and value its liabilities must be available, qualified and properly supervised throughout. I lead five heads covering talent, reward, people operations, learning and employee relations. I prepare papers for the nomination and remuneration committee on executive appointments, pay and succession, and I coordinate the people evidence for fit-and-proper assessments. I do not decide claims, agency commission or Shariah matters, which belong to the claims, agency and Shariah functions. My work is to make sure the people we ask to carry each obligation have the right relationship with us, a load they can sustain and a visible successor. Both Kenanggawi cases on this site come from that remit.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking a first compatible non-executive seat with employer approval.

Mandate

Build an HR function able to support a two-tier governance structure, an employed agency-support team and the separation of the sharia business.

Outcomes

• Staffed the sharia separation, with 89 of 96 transferring employees accepting
• Redesigned pay for employed agency development staff around support quality and compliance results
• Built succession reviews for actuarial, risk and compliance leadership

Decisions in context

Jakarta changed my understanding of who represents an insurer. Lintaravi had about 1,900 employees and an agency force several times larger, contracted separately and supported by employed agency development staff. My policies reached only the first group, yet customers rarely saw the difference. I led 41 HR colleagues and reported to the president director, presenting to the remuneration and nomination committee of the board of commissioners under Indonesia's two-tier structure. The largest project was separating the sharia business into its own company, which required transfers, new contracts and control functions able to stand alone. I also redesigned pay for the agency development staff so that it rewarded support quality and compliance outcomes. I worked in Bahasa Indonesia every day, which made many conversations easier and a few disagreements sharper.

Reason for the move

Recruited as CHRO of a Malaysian family takaful operator, with board-committee responsibility and a return to Kuala Lumpur.

Mandate

Give claims and operations managers practical HR support grounded in how the work is actually done.

Outcomes

• Added file quality and conduct to promotion criteria for claims officers
• Introduced caseload reporting by individual officer
• Supported a regrading of claims and operations roles

Decisions in context

This was my first formal HR appointment, and it came with an advantage and a risk. I knew the claims work closely, so managers trusted my questions about caseload and training. The risk was that I would see every issue as a claims officer would. I led six HR business partners serving about 430 claims, underwriting and operations employees. I worked on grading, performance reviews and selection for supervisory roles, and I learnt employment law and policy properly for the first time, with support from the group's employee-relations specialists. The work I valued most was a review of how claims officers were promoted. Promotion had favoured speed of closure. We added file quality, reviewed by senior assessors, and the conduct record, so that promotion stopped rewarding people who closed difficult files by pushing customers away.

Reason for the move

Appointed to lead HR at a Jakarta life insurer, a first head-of-function role.

Mandate

Shorten the time new claims officers needed to handle files competently and staff the claims function to its real demand.

Outcomes

• Rebuilt induction around supervised live files
• Built rosters from hourly volume by product and language
• Measured unrostered interpreting work by bilingual officers

Decisions in context

I moved from leading one team to designing how every claims team learnt and was staffed. With nine trainers and planners, I rebuilt induction so that new officers handled supervised files from their second week instead of observing for a month. I also built rosters from the volume we actually received by hour, product and language, rather than from a standard pattern. That revealed how often a Malay- or Mandarin-speaking officer was pulled away from their own files to explain a decision on a colleague's behalf. We began to count that work and roster it. During this period I studied part time for a master's degree in human resource management. The degree gave me a vocabulary for what I had seen; the roster gave me evidence that managers could not easily dismiss.

Reason for the move

Moved into HR business partnering for claims and operations after completing the master's degree.

Mandate

Settle motor accident, theft and windscreen claims fairly and keep the team's caseload under control.

Outcomes

• Led a fourteen-officer motor claims team within a delegated payment limit
• Tracked open cases by individual officer
• Rebalanced injury-related files across the team

Decisions in context

I joined as a motor claims officer and became team leader in 2004, with fourteen officers handling accident, theft and windscreen claims for private and small-fleet policyholders. I approved payments within a delegated limit and referred larger or disputed claims to senior assessors. I learnt to watch each person's caseload, because the team average hid the officer who was falling behind. Festive periods, monsoon weeks and a single large accident could change the load within days. I also learnt that the officers who handled the most distressing calls, accidents involving serious injury or death, were often the most capable people and the least likely to say they needed a break. Moving that work fairly between them was part of leading the team, and it became the question I carried into training, HR and my current role.

Reason for the move

Asked to design training and staffing for the wider claims function.

Mandate

Support adjusters by assembling evidence and correspondence for each claim file.

Outcomes

• Prepared document schedules and draft report sections for adjusters
• Recorded site observations under supervision
• Maintained claimant correspondence logs

Decisions in context

I joined a loss adjuster straight after my degree. The firm investigated motor, property and liability losses for insurers and reported on the cause and value of each claim. I chased documents, recorded site observations under supervision and drafted sections of reports for the adjusters to review. I had no authority over any conclusion, and the firm made that clear on every report. What I learnt was the difference between a fact the file could prove and a judgement that belonged to a qualified person. I also saw how much of a claimant's experience depended on who answered the telephone, a lesson one senior adjuster taught me through a widow's handwritten note. I moved to an insurer because I wanted to work on that relationship from the inside, not only describe it in a report for someone else.

Reason for the move

Joined a general insurer to work on the claims relationship from inside the company.