Natalie Spurrier

Natalie's Journey: Law School to AA Claims Director Welcome to the Diary of a Claims Hammer podcast, where we share real stories from people shaping the insurance industry. In today's episode I'm joined by Natalie Spurrier, who's the Claims Director at the AA. Natalie's career journey is nothing short of inspiring, from starting out as a solicitor to leading an end to end claims operation for one of the UK's most recognised brands. We talk about pivotal moments that shaped her career, the importance of resilience when life throws you challenges at your way and why backing yourself for roles you don't take every box for can lead to incredible opportunities. Natalie also shares her proudest achievement, how she balances A demanding role with family life, and why insurance offers such a diverse and rewarding career path. This is a conversation packed with honesty, insight and practical advice for anyone thinking about their next career move. So let's dive in. OK Nestle, So a nice easy one to start with. Who are you and what do? Speaker 2 You do. So my name is Natalie Spurrier. I'm currently the claims director for a a insurance. I've been here for six years and I run an end to end claims operation within the A A managing the in house insurer claims for the household claims and motor and we also manage the accident management claims as well. So that's everything right through from ethanol, so first notification of loss all the way through to all parts of third party counter fraud and everything in between. Speaker 1 So a very, very busy job, no doubt. So what one of the questions I like to ask, and yours is it's going to be a slightly different answer to others, is about how you got into the insurance industry. So just looking at your CV and, and for kind of people who haven't aren't that familiar with you, your roots is slightly different in that you went in to become a solicitor first in 2001, then you kind of worked for a couple of different firms there before moving into insurance. So ask this in two parts really that why did you go down the solicitor route? First of all, what kind of attracted you to to that side of it? Speaker 2 Oh, that. I suppose that all goes all the way back to when I was doing my A Levels, which now feels like a million years ago, sadly. But I was always at school, I was always more interested in the humanities side of things. So maths and science, I struggled with them. They weren't my natural bag. So I was always interested in, you know, the sort of human side of sociology life, what makes people make the decisions they make? How does that then impact wider society? You know, cultural questions, all of that sort of thing. So when I was choosing my A levels, I chose economics just because I thought maybe I should learn a little bit about how the world works. And then I chose law and sociology. And then I just, I just really found the study in the law just fascinating. And that that just makes me sound like an absolute swat. But it was what I found fascinating about it was the ubiquitous nature. Nature of it is everywhere. It touches every part of every single person's life without them even knowing about it. So I found the study of that in terms of how it's created, how it's moulded, how it's changed, how it's influenced, just super, super interesting. So it stemmed from that really. So then I went on to study law at university and originally I thought I wanted to be a criminal lawyer. That's where I thought I wanted to go. And I actually wanted to be a barrister because I enjoyed, you know, we did mock trials and whatever else at uni and I enjoyed that side of things. But my barrister dream didn't happen because back then, which again makes me sound really old and it may not have changed, I don't know, but pupilages weren't funded. You had to support yourself for a year whilst you did a pupilage, after you've been for uni, after you've done the bar exams. And I, you know, I didn't come from a family where I had a whole load of money that could support me. So it just wasn't, it didn't feel like an option for me. So that's when I went down the solicitor route instead. And yeah, it's just sort of stemmed from there really. And actually, that's when I thought when I do become a sister, I know I knew I was going to want to do contentious law. I wasn't going to be a commercial lawyer. I wasn't going to sit scouring through contracts. So just at that time and you know how things have changed where I am now, Business commercials just didn't interest me at all. It was all about people as far as I was concerned. Speaker 1 Excellent. Navigating Personal Injury Law and Early Management And I mean that's it's a fantastic story to tell. I think there'll be lots of people who, yeah, they've had kind of similar thoughts about wanting to go down the criminal route and then have ended up down a very different one. You've obviously gone down the contentious route, but into effectively kind of a part, a subset of insurance, see dealing with claims side of it. So how did you get into into that side of it? You see your first couple of roles, one was with Thompson, Stell and Passmore, then across to Owen Mitchell, then across to Minster Law. What kind of attracted you to the Pi side of of kind of the claims world? Speaker 2 So that evolved. So I see set about applying for training contracts, which as we know and is still the case now, incredibly competitive. I did apply to a few of the Big 5 firms. I don't looking back, I don't really know why other than everyone else was doing it and I thought perhaps I should do it. I had an an interview at Clifford Chance. It was the worst interview I've ever had. I felt about 3 centimetres big when I came out of that. So through those experiences I thought actually I'm, I'm not going to be suited to a big, large firm. And one in London. I was a small town girl, come from sitting border, you know, never really been to a big city. I lived in Tunbridge Wells at the time. So I thought, well, I'm going to apply locally and Thompson Salem Passmore was and still it is a really well respected legal firm with a really long history and it had a strong, you know, whole law practice. So it did all of the contentious areas that I was interested in. So I was fortunate enough to obtain a training contract there and when I did my first, you know, choosing my first seats, family law and Pi were two areas I wanted to do because it was people. And I knew that I would get to meet lots of different people with lots of different areas of life or who would need the help of a solicitor to navigate a situation that they'd found themselves in. So one of my first, my first seat was personal injury and I was very lucky to at that point. Julie Reynolds was a partner at Thompson St. Passmore to worry, very well respected lawyer in brain injury field. She had close knit links with the child brain injury trust. She did a lot of child brain injury work. And you know, you can imagine and being a young crusading lawyer, that was just so inspiring. And because it was a small affirm, I got to do quite a lot of work on some really interesting cases. And you know, I'm talking about early 2000s when we didn't have the MoJ and all of that sort of stuff. So, you know, the cases were all very different, all different types. So that just sort of sparked my interest. And then I actually spent ended up doing a whole year in Pi because of some resource challenges and whatever else they had in a firm at the time. And I ended up with my own caseload under supervision obviously, but my own caseload at that point. So it was a sort of series of events, I guess that sort of led me to have those opportunities. And then I knew I wanted to qualify into personal injury. So, so that's what I did. I practiced there for a couple of years, then I took some time out, two years out to have my first child. And then I actually left Thompson and passed more and thought right, OK, now I'm going to put my big girl pants on and I'm going to go and try in the city. So I applied to Erin Mitchell and managed to get a role in their London office working with Alice and Eddie, again, a hugely respected lawyer in her field and and working alongside Keith Barrett as well. He's now at Phil Fisher, another greatly respected lawyer. So again, I just was fortunate enough to fortunate. Well, you know, I'm creating the opportunity but it came off but fortunate enough to then work alongside some really, really respected. Colin Ettinger was in the team at the time as well. So he was a partner, Erin Witchell. So I started working on catastrophic injury cases with quite a small amount of experience really. So and I had a whole, you know, wide-ranging caseload, but it was sort of claims over 50 grand plus. And while I was there, I worked on what was at the time one of the biggest brain injury cases at that point in time in terms of value. And so I learnt loads. I learnt absolutely loads. And again, I still wasn't really that interested in the whole sort of commercial side of things in terms of how business operates and runs. But then as you know as a lawyer and then as you move up the ladder, you are expected to get involved in business development, team management, all of those facets of running an operation. Pivoting to Team Management and Operational Roles And I started to find myself becoming interested in it quite by surprise actually. So then I thought, well, OK, I'd done. I was there for sort of five years or so and I thought, right, what could I do now? Now I had a choice to be the carry on up the partner ladder or I could go into a purely operational role. And to be perfectly honest with you, I had two children at that time who were both quite young and I was finding it hard to balance family life and billable hours and everything else that was inspected in between. And I didn't, I don't like doing something half assed like, you know, if I'm going to do something, I want to do it well. So I thought, well, if I carry on on the partner track, I'm going to have to bill hit me, exceed my bill of borrowers, get involved in business development, get involved in operational management and run cases at the same time. And I just thought, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do both things really well. So at that point Minster Law were opening a London office and they were using a different model where their team leaders had no caseload and that's quite rare. So that was attractive. I thought here's an opportunity for me to try my management, team management as a team leader. I'm either going to love it or hate it and if I don't like it, I'll go back to fee earning. So that's what I did. I moved into Minster Law as a team leader or team manager in their London office. It was setting a new office up, very small operation, learnt loads while I was there and I loved it. I and it, there's no surprise really given that, you know, my earlier decision, my career was all centred around people and trying to make a difference to people who are navigating situations in their life. It's not a surprise that I actually, I enjoyed the team management side of things as well. So, so that's how I ended up at Minster Law as a team manager and then I sort of progressed up the ladder. Speaker 1 It's an amazing journey and and so many of that will resonate with not just people in insurance listing to this, but also people are going down the legal route. So that one of the points that you made at the start that I loved was stick around right where you looked at applying. So obviously you're looking at the Clifford chances that the places where you think you need to be applying to and getting jobs at and then you've ended up at a smaller kind of well respected practice, but you've got hands on experience. I think that is so valuable and that I think there's a lot of people who again, will be looking at the bigger firms where you you're essentially kind of assisting, photocopying, not really doing much on the tools, but go out and look at smaller firms who will give you lots of experience early doors because then you've quickly find out what you do and you don't like. So I think that that's, yeah, that's an amazing kind of take away for people. And so you've obviously gone through the the ranks then at Minster Law and then made, made quite a big change really kind of going from the solicitor side, which it works really, really hard to kind of obviously get do your exams, get your training contract qualified, do all that kind of stuff. And then then you've flipped them completely and gone to an insurer. From Solicitor to Insurer: ERS and Redundancy So you arrive at ERS in February of 2018. Talk to us about that. Natalie, why did you make that change? Speaker 2 So I was at Minster Law from 2013 to 2018 and in that time I didn't practice in terms of myself. I didn't have a caseload at any point. I was supervising cases and I was managing teams and eventually worked my way up to the deputy head of department at Minster. But a Minster went on an incredible journey and and still is from, you know, quite an unknown. I've to well now the the operation that it is, you know, real a real competitor when it comes to personal injury, including serious injury as well. So I learned a lot in those roles in terms of managing an operation and all that that entails from, you know, your budgeting side of things to your strategic decisions that you're making, to the, the importance of being able to influence decisions through stakeholder management and all of that sort of, you know, key stuff. And I enjoyed it. And, and I got to the point where I was working in Minster law, but the London office had closed and I was having to commute up to Yorkshire and getting two children, both still quite young. It was only going to be sustainable for a certain period of time. And I did that. I did a commute up to Yorkshire 2-3 days a week for about a year and a half. So I knew it had an end point. So then I felt like I was a bit of, a bit of a pivotal point in my journey really. I could carry on and go and do a similar role in another law firm. And I did look at that and I did speak to a few people. I thought, you know, I could do something completely different and that or what, what could I do? And it's quite when you've, you know, chosen a career path and a profession, it can be quite difficult and scary to try and untangle, OK, where are my transferable skills and what, what else could I do? And then when I thought about it, I thought, well, I've actually spent my entire career suing insurers. So maybe I'll just go across and see what it's like to be in an insurer and be, you know, and I've used this very so many times, but be the purse holder is the purse Raider. And that is essentially what I decided to do. So I started looking for insurance roles and I'd already leftminster at this point, so I decided to take a little bit of a break whilst I was deciding what I wanted to do and the job at ERS came up. I didn't know anything about ERSI didn't know anything about the Lloyds insurance market. I didn't know anything about insurers in terms of the inside. And you know what, what are the magic levers that you need to pull and what all the component parts that go together. I had no idea about underwriting and, you know, claims insurance or anything, but I thought, well, OK, I always Richard Branson and loads of people who have heard this quote, he's you know, he's, he says if you see a job advert and you can do seven other things you don't know how to do 3 Apply anyway because you're going to learn the three. And there was loads on that job description. I thought, I haven't got a clue what that is, but I'm going to, I'm going to reply anyway. And really not really expecting anything to come of it, if I'm honest. And then, yeah, I got the call and I remember where I was because I'd taken a break. My brothers, both my brothers live in Dubai. I'd decided to go and visit them for a week or so. And I was in the Dubai airport waiting to come home. And I got the call from the agent saying they'd like to see you for the ERS job. And I was like, oh, because I had not expected it at all. Anyway, so that's how I ended up at ERS as head of personal injury and my the boss at the time was a gentleman called Gary Barker. Again, really well respected insurance professional claims director at the time. And yeah, he took me under his wing and taught me everything he knew about insurance and everything in between. And on my first day, he sat me down and he talked to me about loss ratios and combined loss ratios and combined operating ratios and indemnity triangles and all of this, which was like an absolute foreign language. And I remember coming home and saying to my other half at the time, I have no idea how I'm ever going to learn all of this. It felt impossible, but it felt interesting. It, it was, it's, it sparked my interest again. And I, I like learning. I enjoy learning new things and you know, I've done, I've done an MBA and I, I, I like learning knowledge. So it, that fired me up and I thought, well, here's an opportunity and, and I quickly fell enough. And that sounds really cliche, doesn't it? But it's true. I quickly fell in love with the intricacies of how an insurance business is run, and in particular, the interplay between claims reserving and underwriting that triangle in terms of how that operates was fascinating. So yeah, I soaked up everything Gary threw at me. I got a lot of things wrong. I got a lot of things that I just did not understand. There was one particular thing that he asked me to do, which, you know, I tried my absolute best to do, but it was clear through three months into my role that I really didn't know what I was doing for that particular project. But he's that's fine. I'll take it. We'll, you know, we'll do it together. And then so I learned, so I was, you know, I think in your career, one of the most important things is to find the person who is going to take you under their wing and cease. He saw, he saw opportunity in me, he saw potential in me. And he decided he was going to do what he could to support that to grow. And when you find that you need to hold onto it really quite tightly and you need to go on that journey with them rather than, you know, kicking against it or trying to run before you can walk and all of that sort of stuff. So I was very lucky to have found myself in that situation. I spent a quite short period there actually, because within six months of being there, they went through some changes. ERS was not particularly in a good place at that time, so redundancies were announced and I was unfortunately put at risk of redundancy after six months of being there, which I was devastated about because not only the work at that time as well, I was a single mum on my own with two girls. So firstly the financial side of things was like, Oh my God, how am I going to cope? But then secondly, I can't believe this come to such a short, you know, has been such a short journey when I've been enjoying it so much. So I was devastated at that. But you know, these things have a way of working out. So yeah, that's how I ended up at in insurance. Building Resilience and Finding Purpose at the AA It's it again, a fantastic journey and so many kind of points that that fall onto other questions that I want to ask later on, particularly around where you're saying find the person who's who, who can take you under the wing. I think that's that's a really great point. I'll come back to that and we'll see you've had the set back, which again, this is another great part of podcasts like this that I think everybody assumes careers are plain sailing. There's it's that for some reason you have it easy that other people don't very much the case that you've had a big set back there. Just as you start your journey into insurance. But then obviously you end up at the A A in Feb 2019, as the technical claims director said. So how did that role come about? What, what kept you, I guess, from going to your insurance isn't for me. Now I'm going to go back down this list to read because you know that you've done it for so many years. Yeah. What what made you kind of go keep bugging away at the insurance sign of it? Speaker 2 Well, just because I hadn't, I didn't feel like I'd learned enough and I thought I don't want to go back to law. Now I've had six months taste of something else. It felt like a step backwards. It would have. And you know, obviously I needed to earn money. I had a family to support mortgage, pay for all of those things. So, you know, when I was looking for new roles when I left ERS, I did look at the full breadth. I did look at, you know, fee earning roles again. But I, you know, I knew my gut. I didn't really want to do that. And if I took a role at a law firm, fee earning or in operational management in a law firm, it wouldn't be for long because I knew that I wanted to keep learning around insurance. But yeah, you're coming around setbacks and my girls and anyone who's worked with me as a well, anyone who's worked with me, not just in my leadership sense. I talk about resilience all the time. And I it is the single best trait that you can have is to be resilient. And you only build resilience by having setbacks. That's, that is how you build them. And it's how you face into those situations and how you show up when life is really, really hard and you know, things happen that are outside of your control, which let's face it, most of things that happen to us in life are outside of our control. It's how you show up in those moments that really count. And they are then what gives you the strength and the mindset to then get through hard times. So prior to being my redundant at ERS, I've gone through a really acrimonious relationship breakout. I and that, you know, wasn't my first. I've been married before, so I'd have two fair relationships behind me. I had all of these things going around in my head, but I knew I didn't have a choice to just sit back and just not do anything and just let life happen to me. I needed to set a good example to my girls. I needed to carry on with my career. That's what makes me the best version of myself when I'm learning and growing. So I knew I wanted to stay in insurance and I actually was very close to starting a row at Hastings. Speaker 3 I can't remember what the role and I was now, I think it was technical head of technical claims. I can't remember now, but I was very close. I was two weeks away from starting at Hastings and then I was contacted about a role that just sounded really interesting. It was a technical claims director role and if I'm honest, I'd never done anything quite like that before. It was a smaller startup style business within the A A they were setting up a brand new claims function having only just established their own in house underwriter. So it felt exciting, a little bit unknown and definitely a stretch. I remember thinking director, that sounds like big stuff, but Richard Branson's words came back to me. You know, someone offers you an opportunity, you're not quite sure how to do it. So yes, learn how to do it later, and there was probably at. Speaker 2 Least half of the job spec. Speaker 3 That I hadn't done before, but I was curious enough to put myself forward. So I met the CEO of the underwriter at the time and the then claims director, and I came away really genuinely excited. It felt like the right moment to push myself again and what really stood out for me was the opportunity to shape something from the ground up. What I didn't know when I accepted the role, and I only found out a few months later, was that Gary Barker, who I'd worked previously with the ERS, was also joining as the new claims director. And when I found that out, I was absolutely thrilled. I really loved working within my ERS, though. It just confirmed for me that I've made a right decision. And from there I never looked back. And we built a business that grown and grown and I'm genuinely, genuinely excited and. Speaker 2 Proud of what we created together and boy, I've learned more in the last 5-6 years than I probably have in my entire career, but I still love it. I still love the insurance business and all everything that goes on in the insurance business and obviously being in part of the a, a we've got a broker, an in house underwriter, accident management for financial services. And then, you know, the wider group is all around mobility and still, it's still links back to when I first thought about what I want to do in my career was I want to be able to help people in moments of need. And, you know, people who've had accidents are in a moment of need. They need their car collecting. They've got to collect their kids from school and they need their car repair because they're going on holiday in a week's time and their holiday is going to be ruined if you don't repair it. They're broken down by the roadside and you know, they've got their elderly mother in the car. They need collecting and taking on to where their journey is. So it, you know, in a sort of serendipitous way, it's kind of still linked to my original core value of what I wanted to get out of my career. Although, you know, on a day-to-day basis, I'm not picking the person up and I'm not, you know, fixing the car. But my role is to make sure all the component parts of that claim journey work in a way that the customer gets what they've paid for when they've bought an insurance product and that they get to deal and we help them to deal with the incident, deal with that unfortunate situation, and then they can move on with their lives. Overcoming Challenges: MBA, Therapy, and People Development Look, there's some amazing messages in there nicely in such a fascinating career. I mean, there's a couple there that I think stand out to me that what 1 is backing yourself and taking, taking a role that you don't know everything about. Again, sometimes when I speak to people, there's an assumption that they, they can't apply for it unless they tick every box on on kind of the job spec. And you've shown in a couple of roles going into the Rs and then the AA that you, you don't need all of that to succeed, which I think I think is fantastic. The second one and what that people have had lots of great stories told on on the podcast about kind of people's experiences in jobs and stuff like that. Your story about resilience was extremely powerful and just talking about personal setbacks, career setbacks and things like that. And I hope your daughter's listened back to this one day because I'm sure they'd be very proud of kind of the way you've approached all of that. And it's, it's an amazing message. Again, I think people sometimes people obviously deal with setbacks in different ways, but I mean that you've just got to, you've got to get up, get out of bed, get, get back into it. Despite all of this is an amazing message for people to say, So thanks for sharing that. So we've talked about kind of key moments that have shaped your career and an amazing career as well. But if you had to kind of single one out, what would you say is a, is a your proudest achievement in your career so far? If you had to pick one? Oh my. Speaker 2 God, if I had to pick one, yeah, I'll pick a proudest achievement. But then I'll also talk about what gives me, what makes me smile every day. So probably my proudest achievement is quite aside from where I am now, but doing my MBA, which I did a few years ago, which I was again. And that was Gary saying to me, you know, at some point you could do my job, but to do that you need to round out your experience and your knowledge. So an MBA would be a great way to do that. We had a conversation about it in August, and then about four weeks later, I found myself signed up and I was doing an MBA and I had no time really to think about it. And in some respects that's probably the best way to do these things because if you think about it too hard, you'll talk yourself out of it. And it was a big commitment. I had to do it part time over 2 years whilst working in a very demanding job with two children. So that's probably my proudest, I think. And, and I would, I would recommend an MBA to anybody who asked. It does round you out. It does give you knowledge on areas where you wouldn't necessarily touch your everyday roles. You know, I would find myself in meetings and people will be talking about concepts that I just really didn't really understand what they were talking about and you know that, you know, like net present value and things like that. And I don't know what any of that means and multipliers And, you know, when they're talking about businesses and things and, and I and it irritated me. I don't like not knowing. So I think that's probably my proudest and it will, I took it. That also coincided with COVID, which was a really difficult time obviously for lots of people. But I was home schooling as well because, you know, schools were closed. My daughter was doing, her eldest daughter was doing her GCSEs. And also at that time we had some quite difficult family circumstances to navigate. So I started the MBA in the September and by the December I was ready to quit because of all of these other personal things that were going on. And I remember talking to Gary again and he urged me to speak to somebody because he could tell that I wasn't myself. And my answer to him was what's the point of talking to anyone? What you know, they can't change anything. No one can change anything that's currently going on my life. So what's the point? But he urged me to, and I'm forever grateful to him for that because that changed that, that that had such a powerful impact on my life. So, yeah, so I managed to do the NBA but navigated in the middle of it, which when I look back was a little mini breakdown really. That's, you know, if you were an outsider, that's how you view it. I mean, not to the sense that, you know, I found myself unable to get out of bed, but mentally I was really not in a good place at all. So I embarked on therapy, which I did in the first year of my NBA and and I and I got through it and I managed to complete it. And that, so that's probably my proudest achievement was not just doing the NBA, but doing it in in a time in my life which was really, really challenging. And yeah, there were times when I just wanted to call under a duvet and just not come out. But, you know, you talk about my girls and if they listen back to it and they've heard this, they've heard this me talk about this anyway. But they're really what kept me going because I, I didn't want to let them down. So I, that's what caught me out of bed every day and put 1 foot in front of the other and navigated life as best I could and tried to focus on what I could control rather than everything else that was going on in my life. And the therapy that I had was life changing in a sense of some of the tools and things that me and my therapist talked about. And I still use, I still use now, so that's probably my proudest achievement. But what makes me smile every day is still people. And it is finding and watching. Finding people with potential, watching people grow, watching people navigate their own lives and their own careers and being able to be that person who can support them in whatever they want to achieve. You know, whether that'd be they stay with us at the AL they go on something, you know, I love watching people who've left, left us but are now working somewhere else and they're just absolutely flying. So that that is what makes me smile every day is the is the people. Because at the end of the day, a business is literally just a bunch of people trying to make good decisions to make the business run, to get value from their work lives, which work, you know, translates into value in their personal lives and gives them opportunities, etcetera. So that that is the side of it that makes me smile. Exploring Diverse and Stable Career Paths in Insurance There's there's some lot to to come on here and and talk about some of that stuff mostly is extremely brave and but will resonate with so many people when you're talking about that. I was thinking like, how do I, how do I kind of respond to it? It's mine is I, I talk to somebody as well and kind of I think therapy is a is a great tool for some people can have a look at it and think you can only use that if you're in the worst possible place in your, in your life. And some people maybe, but no, it has so many benefits. And I think just to kind of it helps you with so many different aspects of your life, but also your career as well. So look, I think to come on here and talk about that. Hope people listening to it and think well I might give that a go as well. I personally would would recommend it. Speaker 2 And I think it's, it's really important to talk about it. And when I went through that experience, I made a decision there and then that I will always talk about it because 1. And, you know, and I was the same. And I still hear it now from, you know, some people I were with, they look at people that you look at people who are in positions of perceived power or leadership and you think they've got it all worked out and everything is, you know, their lives are rosy and they know exactly what they're doing and they can handle loads of situations because that's what you see, because that's the job of a good leader is to, you know, you, you know, not to break down in front of your team. Your job is to protect them. So that's what they see. But it's not the case. And you know, I same as you, I think therapy, any form of therapy, whether it's talking therapy or actual, you know, CBT or whatever, it's just severely underwrited and the taboo is changing. People are talking about it more. But you know, you think about our brains and the massive computational power that we have in our brains. It's no wonder we get ourselves in a pickle and a model sometimes. So of course we need to talk to people about that and, and open up and, and you'll learn so much more about yourself through that process. So yeah, I will. I will always talk openly about it with with anyone who asked me. Speaker 1 It's fantastic. Thanks Natalie. So if you were sitting down with somebody later on today and it could be one of your daughters who they're not not quite sure about what what to do with their career or they're starting off looking at careers and things like that. Why shouldn't people seriously consider a career in insurance in your view? Speaker 2 Well, quite honestly, because there's just so many different facets to it. You know, an insurance company, you could go into insurance company doing HR. You could go into insurance company doing data, you could do IT. You could do customer service, you could do claims. You know, it's not insurance is a is a whole host of different careers basically. And, and the, the other reason I would say as well is because, and I was singing the sound pretty trite, but it's pretty safe in the sense that insurance is always going to be needed and around because it's what makes in some part the world go round. If we didn't have insurance, we wouldn't have big businesses. We wouldn't have, you know, oil companies, we wouldn't have shipping companies, we wouldn't have cars. As you know, it's, it's an absolute necessity for our so, for our society and for economics to run smoothly. So it's a safe bet is probably what I would say. You know, when you think about insurance, you think, well, I don't know what insurance is. I don't want to do insurance. Well, don't think about it as a job. Think about it as an industry with a whole load of jobs and careers that permeate through it. So, you know, we've got at the a, a now we've, you know, just got the whole AI centre of excellence opened up. So, you know, people with AI experience and coding and data and cyber and, you know, and legal, you know, in house legal teams and finance teams and accountants and business managers and just everything in between. So whatever thing you might want to do as a career, you could go and do it in an insurer. Speaker 1 Yeah, completely agree. I think that's that breadth, but I also had the the safe point that's always going to be there. You know, it's I think that's that's a really, really good one. Setting Clear Boundaries for Work-Life Balance So we've talked a lot about kind of right career, the different roles that you've done, MBA, you're obviously an extremely busy job now two daughters, how on earth do you manage a work life balance doing all of that? Speaker 2 So I have always been somebody who is quite protective over my family life. And I think it's about knowing what your boundaries are and what you're prepared to accept and what you're not. And weeks very easy to get yourself into a role and expectations, you know, see other people working till 9:00 or answering emails till 9:00 and you think that's what you've got to do. And if my advice would be if you find yourself in a business where that is the culture and it jars with you, you're in the wrong business. So you need to go and find a business that doesn't operate like that. And there are loads of them. It's not the norm. So, and, and to be honest with you, that's one of the reasons why I'm, you know, I looked outside of Irwin Mitchell because it didn't, it didn't work for me. You know, I, I had two small children. I didn't want to be working on cases at 9:30, ten o'clock at night and over weekends. That was the time that I got to spend with them and it was precious. So I it's about having boundaries and being very clear about that. I know that's not to say you might find yourself in roles where you know you have to put those boundaries a little bit at risk at times, but it shouldn't be a long term thing. If anything, it'll be a stepping stone, something else. You find yourself in that role, you're not in the right place. So I've always been very clear about what my boundaries are and then I lead how I would like to be LED. So I, you know, you'd have to speak to my team to fill that with, but this is actually case. But you know, I don't I don't e-mail and message my team late, you know, after clocking off time. We don't if we talk at the weekend, it's on a WhatsApp group and it's normally a silly meme. It's not, you know, anything really related to work. If if anything, it might be, if, you know, because we've got effed on, we might just ask a question about how the phones, but that's a support rather than what's going on with the phones. So I sort of lead by example in that respect. And then that that permeates down. It's top down at the end of the day. If I was, you know, if I was a leader who was constantly mailing my team, asking them questions at 9/10 11:00 at night, that's going to feel all the way down into their teams. And then that quickly becomes a culture. But it, and it, you know, I'm not kicking against the culture of the A, a by doing that is genuinely my, my boss doesn't e-mail me at the weekend, so it doesn't e-mail me in the evenings. And the CEO doesn't, you know, it's, it's top down. So, so when I'm at work, I'm at work, I'm focused. I'm, you know, I work very hard. And then when it's time to come away from work, it's time to come away from work. And I, you know, I read a lot. So that's my switching off time. I you know, I like watching silly shows on TVI go to the gym. That's been a relevantly recent thing for the last couple of years, but that's been a really, really important way of relaxing for me and having a little downtime. And my kids have more grown up now. You know, the, my oldest can be 21 this year, which makes us really old. My youngest is gonna turn 15 in about four weeks. So, you know, I'm at that stage now where I can, you know, get more time to myself. But when your kids are smaller, it's, it's, it's much, much harder. You know, you're on, you're on the go constantly. So it was always important to have boundaries and just to find carve time out, even if it was just, you know, half an hour in a bath with the door shut and nobody bothering you, half an hour that, you know, that's all got that's gold. But yeah, you and again, it comes back to what you control. So you get to control your boundaries, nobody else. And it's just about staying true to those. And if it's not working, submit this not working? Don't find something that does work. Speaker 1 Having, having that control, I think it's so important. Imagining a Day in the Life of a Group CEO And also people, again, listening to this who are in junior positions, knowing that you can get to the top by still protecting that time. I think that again, is so, so valuable. And a lot of people think you need to be working all hours all the time. And actually that can have the the opposite effects of the one you want. So, yeah, so, so important. I could, I could honestly keep this, this going for another hour. And it's it's been it's been an amazing conversation about your career in the industry. But I've got one final question for you. And this comes from the previous guest. So Andy Williams from from AXA didn't know who he was going to be asking it to. So if you could swap roles with anyone for a day inside or outside insurance, who would it be with and why? Speaker 2 I, I would swap roles of my with our CEO. I would be, I would yeah, I would love to have a day being the CEO and seeing what that looks like. And because I I just think, yeah, I was a huge amount of responsibility and accountability in my role, but CEO level like that, that. Speaker 1 Is. Speaker 2 That no so CEO of the whole a a so Jacob Felder. So yeah, Jason is the CEO of your call, the in house underwriter. But yeah, the overall group CEO's I called Yakov Faulder and I just think it would be fascinating to see how ACEO of such a big group of the A A navigates on a daily basis. All the different facets of the group because it's such a diverse, although it's centred on in the main centred on mobility and drivers, the the array of business units and services and areas that we have is is broad. So I just, I just think it would be really interesting to spend one day seeing what that seeing what that's like. Speaker 1 Yeah, club, if you're listening. There you go. Trade. Speaker 2 Probably think I'd be in a huge suck up. Speaker 1 That's all. Now I'm sure it's yeah, look, maybe he'll take you up on it and no doubt you'll get there at some point anyway. But look, Natalie, that that's been a fantastic discussion. So many great stories about your career, but also some some personal insights as well, which as I said before, really brave to share them, but so valuable for people listening at any stage of the career as well. So thank you for for being so open and honest and for kind of sharing all of this with us today. Speaker 2 So you're more than. Speaker 3 Welcome. It's been good. I've enjoyed it.