Insurance coverage isn’t attractive. For those who ask Zurich’s Chief Buyer Officer Conny Kalcher, she’ll inform you in any other case. However it didn’t begin that approach 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 teach Gen Z about all issues funds. It was the corporate’s likelihood to show insurance coverage’s chilly and distant strategy into one thing extra accessible.
“I did think it would be men in suits, being very formal and doing things in a particular way. But that’s not at all the case,” Kalcher instructed 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 immediately. However beneath Kalcher, who joined Zurich 5 years in the past, the insurer has been remodeling for the trendy world—one that’s threatened by local weather change, cyber-attacks, and an growing older inhabitants.
Classes from Lego
Lego’s popularity as a high toymaker precedes it. However Kalcher was on the firm when issues seemed completely different.
“Lego is a very rich brand. If you dig into the Lego’s history, it’s filled with strong narrative traditions, brand understanding [and] customer understanding.. it wasn’t always like that,” she mentioned.
By Kalcher’s three-decade profession main advertising and marketing 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 immediately 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 consumers and tried to go after what they wished. In that sense, she doesn’t see insurance coverage as very completely different.
“Of course, the two industries are super different,” Kalcher mentioned. “However, customers are customers, and customers often want the same [thing].”
Courtesy Of Conny Kalcher, Group Chief Buyer Officer, Zurich Insurance coverage, 2024
Folks wish to really feel catered to in a approach that matches their wants and life. However usually, that will get misplaced in insurers’ sea of technical jargon.
In Zurich’s case, though the corporate had seen outstanding international progress 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.
“When I joined, the purpose was ‘we’re here to protect you.’ Guess what? Every insurance company in the whole world is there to protect 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 “bad 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.” Why? To set itself a excessive bar in the way it reaches folks and makes them really feel cared for.
It’s no secret that Apple is nice at understanding what its clients want—and one among its secrets and techniques is consistency. That’s in all probability why the corporate’s devices are essentially the most extensively used world over, from kids to the aged. Zurich desires to construct an identical 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 era that has solely ever identified 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 signifies that the insurer wants to vary its methods and make insurance coverage extra interesting to its youthful viewers.
“We use TikTok in some countries to talk with that generation, and that works very well. Instagram as well,” Kalcher mentioned. The objective is to be enjoyable, partaking and dependable for Gen Z and past.
Zurich’s quick movies on TikTok and Instagram, a few of which have gained over 10 million views, talk about numerous matters, 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% progress in its follower depend. In the meantime, because the launch of its TikTok the next yr, it’s seen a 430% progress.
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Kalcher’s considering is easy: “It’s about starting to become relevant by showing up in the places where these customers are. Then, it’s about having the right offers for these customers as well.”
The corporate can be simplifying the way it communicates with folks utilizing AI, making it simpler to search out data and making the knowledge simpler to know.
Finally, Kalcher desires folks to see Zurich as a novel firm that’s altering for its clients.
“I would like our customers to start talking about us as different, as really being there for them,” she mentioned. “That would be the ultimate accolade for us.”
