Last week I joined several FINEOS colleagues at the Altaworld Women in Insurance Tech conference in Boston. The time spent face-to-face with so many leaders would have been enough of a reason to call the event a success. However, I can enumerate a few more.
I walked the Boston Common, enjoyed the afternoon sunshine, and marveled at the history and beauty of that uniquely American city. While I did not have time to complete the Freedom Trail, the walk did give me time to reflect on the impact of our choices and more importantly, how we make decisions. (I’ll complete this thought in a moment.)
A few of the sessions explored topics common to women: glass ceilings, pay equity, how to lean in or lean out as needed. The depth and breadth of experiences across the insurance technology landscape also caught my attention. Even more striking for me was discovering the divergent, but similar, paths taken to achieve success:
- One woman started in the fax room and is now SVP at a well-known insurance company because she persistently puts her hand up to say, “Yes” when new opportunities arise.
- A self-proclaimed millennial became the youngest economic development director for her state by constantly seeking opportunities that raise the bar for her.
- The first female CEO of a state joint underwriting association continues to actively seek creative solutions to seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
- The VP of technology keeps a persistent optimism for opportunity and change as she adds the word, “yet” to descriptions of problems awaiting solutions.
The key takeaways for me are two words that are three letters each: Yes and Yet. Small and mighty words that lend tremendous insight into how successful leaders make decisions. There seems to be a willingness to stretch beyond the norm and take risks. I’ve always believed that taking risks based on historical success rates and weighted potential outcomes is the key to success. Because the role of insurance is to mitigate risk, carriers that are faced with decisions likely want to know, “Where has the path we desire to take already been demonstrated?”
Two small words, enormous impact
Several years ago, FINEOS and New York Life Group Benefit Solutions decided to say, “Yes” to working together on the first purpose-built core administration system for the employee benefits market. Their “yet” was the goal of creating a modern core administration system that places policy administration at the center to enable integrated claims and leave management, complex billing, and revenue management capabilities together with digital enablement and analytics to further enhance the experience for employers and employees. Today, New York Life Group Benefit Solutions has replaced 6 legacy back-end systems with the FINEOS AdminSuite to manage a $4 billion book of business and serve nearly 9 million customers.
Mitigating risk doesn’t mean that you don’t take a risk. It means you go with what you consider to be a proven path toward a new destination.
Discover more about the New York Life Group Benefit Solutions case study.
