Insurance coverage isn’t attractive. If you happen to ask Zurich’s Chief Buyer Officer Conny Kalcher, she’ll inform you in any other case. However it didn’t begin that manner for her.
Kalcher joined the corporate after a 33-year profession on the toy large Lego. The industries are like chalk and cheese—and their clients, too.
But Kalcher noticed a chance for Zurich to coach Gen Z about all issues funds. It was the corporate’s probability to show insurance coverage’s chilly and distant strategy into one thing extra accessible.
“I did assume it might be males in fits, being very formal and doing issues in a specific manner. However that’s in no way the case,” Kalcher informed Fortune in an interview.
The Swiss firm has been round for 150 years, beginning as a humble marine insurer in 1872. It has weathered a number of wars, pure disasters, pandemics, and extra, making it the insurance coverage behemoth it’s at present. However beneath Kalcher, who joined Zurich 5 years in the past, the insurer has been reworking for the fashionable world—one that’s threatened by local weather change, cyber-attacks, and an growing older inhabitants.
Classes from Lego
Lego’s popularity as a prime toymaker precedes it. However Kalcher was on the firm when issues seemed completely different.
“Lego is a really wealthy model. If you happen to dig into the Lego’s historical past, it’s crammed with robust narrative traditions, model understanding [and] buyer understanding.. it wasn’t at all times like that,” she mentioned.
By way of Kalcher’s three-decade profession main advertising and client expertise efforts at Lego, there have been low factors for the corporate when it was verging on chapter—one thing that feels unthinkable at present given the Danish firm is outperforming the worldwide toy trade.
A part of the rationale Lego was in a position to flip its enterprise round, Kalcher mentioned, was as a result of it prioritized customers and tried to go after what they wished. In that sense, she doesn’t see insurance coverage as very completely different.
“After all, the 2 industries are tremendous completely different,” Kalcher mentioned. “Nevertheless, clients are clients, and clients usually need the identical [thing].”
Courtesy Of Conny Kalcher, Group Chief Buyer Officer, Zurich Insurance coverage, 2024
Individuals wish to really feel catered to in a manner that matches their wants and existence. However usually, that will get misplaced in insurers’ sea of technical jargon.
In Zurich’s case, though the corporate had seen exceptional international development via its 100-plus-year historical past, it was nonetheless struggling to redefine itself. Roughly 70% of the corporate’s retail enterprise comes from Europe, the Center East, and Africa. It’s a aggressive panorama the place loyalty is tough to return by as pricing lures clients extra.
“After I joined, the aim was ‘we’re right here to guard you.’ Guess what? Each insurance coverage firm in the entire world is there to guard you. That doesn’t make you stand out,” Kalcher mentioned. And that’s the place she noticed her position change into key: making the corporate extra relatable and undoing the “dangerous narrative” insurance coverage had earned over time.
Altering the way it’s finished
Kalcher’s imaginative and prescient for the Swiss firm is to make it the “Apple of Insurance coverage.” Why? To set itself a excessive bar in the way it reaches individuals and makes them really feel cared for.
It’s no secret that Apple is nice at understanding what its clients want—and one in all its secrets and techniques is consistency. That’s most likely why the corporate’s devices are probably the most broadly used world over, from children to the aged. Zurich needs to construct the same relationship with its base, too.
Take Gen Z, for instance. The group, born between 1997 and 2012, is starting to enter the workforce in droves yearly and, with time, will overtake their millennial counterparts. They’re a digitally savvy technology that has solely ever recognized the world via know-how.
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They’re additionally not as financially conscious, opening new doorways for Zurich, Kalcher mentioned. Nevertheless, that additionally implies that the insurer wants to alter its methods and make insurance coverage extra interesting to its youthful viewers.
“We use TikTok in some nations to speak with that technology, and that works very effectively. Instagram as effectively,” Kalcher mentioned. The aim is to be enjoyable, partaking and dependable for Gen Z and past.
Zurich’s brief movies on TikTok and Instagram, a few of which have gained over 10 million views, focus on varied subjects, from defending oneself financially whereas on trip to busting myths about automobile insurance coverage. Since 2021, when Zurich launched its Instagram deal with, it mentioned it’s seen a 96% development in its follower depend. In the meantime, for the reason that launch of its TikTok the next yr, it’s seen a 430% development.
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Kalcher’s considering is easy: “It’s about beginning to change into related by displaying up within the locations the place these clients are. Then, it’s about having the suitable presents for these clients as effectively.”
The corporate can also be simplifying the way it communicates with individuals utilizing AI, making it simpler to seek out data and making the data simpler to know.
Finally, Kalcher needs individuals to see Zurich as a singular firm that’s altering for its clients.
“I would love our clients to start out speaking about us as completely different, as actually being there for them,” she mentioned. “That may be the final word accolade for us.”
