I joined Beazley in February 2018, three months after I graduated from University. I studied Global Business across Europe, I spent my first year in Denmark, second one in Belgium and eventually moved to London to finish my degree. The reason why I decided to take on such an itinerant course of studies was to keep use of my language skills, I am an Italian native speaker fluent in English, French, Spanish and basics of German. These skills were found to be useful while I was searching for a job, and Beazley had a “brand-new” entry-level role to support an International team with colleagues based in London, Barcelona, Paris and Canada. When I first started, the team had four members and by the time I changed roles in less than two years it doubled in size!
How has your career developed during your time at Beazley?
From starting on an entry-level position in the Financial industry with very little prior knowledge of insurance and the market, at Beazley I was able to progress internally and move from the International claims team to the international incident response team, and then promoted Assistant Manager two years later. Beazley has always supported me with the right access to relevant resources, training and mentoring to improve my skills.
What have been the standout moments for you?
After three months joining Beazley, and still within my probation period, I was sent on a business trip to our Barcelona office for dedicated training with one of my managers. This increased my knowledge which led me to get involved in another project and another trip to Poland for the development of an internal platform three months later.
Tell us about your work/life balance at Beazley?
When I joined Beazley, the company still used to have the standard London Market working hours (9-5pm) and “dress smart to work” type of approach. After six months, flexible hours were introduced and the possibility to work from home as well. This allowed me to adjust my outside of work routine still being able to attend meetings, deliver tasks and other commitments. However, I think Beazley’s approach and support towards its employees and work/life balance was totally achieved during the pandemic: wellbeing days, flexible working hours and internal workshops i.e. yoga classes etc. Aside from this, my team and I can manage our time in the most efficient way, meaning I can adjust personal appointments around a flexible working calendar day.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
What I enjoy the most in my job is knowing that my team and I are supporting and helping insureds that are victims of cyber-attacks, and we do so from the very first moment! Insureds rely on our support to mitigate and remediate what they are facing and with our help they can restore and go back to business as usual. Other than this, I enjoy all the projects that I am involved in and the direct engagement I have with our insureds (outside of cyber breaches).
What misconceptions do people have about working in insurance?
The most common question I used to/get asked when I tell people I work in insurance is “oh, so do you call people and sell policies?”. I think there are a lot of misconceptions around insurance and probably this is due to the fact that people maybe do not have an in-depth exposure to the industry and have limited knowledge on how the business works in general. Each different department plays its role in order for the business to grow and achieve better results: risk management, underwriting, claims, actuarial, finance, HR, culture and people, marketing and each single other one that I have probably missed.
When I went to Lloyd’s of London for the first time and had a guided tour of the building, I found out that one of the very first vessels to be insured was the Titanic (one thing I did not know myself, and got me amazed!)