WHO WE ARE

Kim: Welcome, everybody, to another episode of the Life at Travelers podcast, and I have quite the guest for you here today. Joining us is Matthew Wilson, CEO of Travelers Europe. Matthew, welcome.

Matthew: Thank you very much, Kim. Nice to be here.

Kim: And I understand you flew in last night. Midnight?

Matthew: Midnight. Yeah. Just about hit my bed about half past midnight last night.

Kim: Yeah? Have you had a couple coffees?

Matthew: I’ve had several coffees this morning, thank you. Yeah, and very nice they are, too.

Kim: Alright. So, Matthew, let’s just start off with what brought you to Travelers. So, what initially attracted you to joining Travelers?

Matthew: I had a phone call from someone that used to work for me, and they were at Travelers, and they said, you should come and have a conversation. It’s a culture you’ll really like. I’d been at another organization for ten years and was thinking, is this it for life? Do I stay here? Is there something else more exciting? So, the call was very timely, and I spent some time understanding what Travelers was in Europe and everyone was fantastic. It was a whirlwind two weeks of exploration and flew over to Hartford and saw the scale of the place and it was exciting. It was a company that was doing really well, had a fantastic track record, but wasn’t particularly big in Europe, and the opportunity in what we could do was really quite something special.

Kim: Absolutely, and you mentioned the culture in that phone call. What do you believe about our company culture sets us apart from other insurance carriers in the European market?

Matthew: I think it probably sets us apart from virtually all companies. It is exactly that. It is the company. Travelers has been going for 160, 170 years. So, none of us started it. We’re not the creators of Travelers, and it’s all about making sure that everything is done in the name of the company for the benefit of the company. There’s no one major person. It’s a real team game, basically.

Kim: How would you describe your leadership philosophy? And how do you feel like that aligns with Travelers’ overall mission and values?

Matthew: Yeah, I think Travelers… We talk about Travelers and the place, but the place is effectively people. It’s not buildings. It’s the people that work here. And even with our broker friends who give us the business in Europe, the one thing they value about Travelers, or the most that they value about Travelers, is the consistency of the people. If you build a relationship with Travelers, you’re building it with real people and they’re there every time you go and see them.

Kim: Right.

Matthew: So, for me, it’s that consistency. The fact that I can attract great talent, build their careers over time, think about where they’re going directionally, and look after them over the long term and give them new skills, training and then open up positions that they potentially didn’t even think would be available to them. So, it’s that ability to really build around the people you’ve got and think about what you’re doing for them as well as what they’re doing for the company.

Kim: Yeah, and how do you foster the space for your employees to be creative thinkers, to innovate? What do you do at Travelers Europe to foster that?

Matthew: Well, obviously we take part in the InJam (Innovation Jam) every year, which is the big technology, sort of, 24-hour session of coming up with great new ideas, but we always challenge our people to be creative. So, we have, sort of, four key values, one of which is being creative. One is collaboration. And if you’ve spent any time at Travelers, you know it’s about collaboration. So, you know, trying to, sort of, get everyone’s heads around a problem and solve it and that’s really good because you come up with a better solution, but also, if it then turns out you didn’t get it quite right, no one’s to blame because you’re all around the table. You all thought something was going to work and when it goes wrong, it’s a learning lesson. It’s not a blame game. You all work out, ‘Why didn’t we see the right answer? What didn’t we get right?’ And, ‘How do we get better as we go forward?’ So, it’s that incremental, continuous improvement rather than thinking, ‘Whose fault was it?’ And that’s a great space to be in because it means you’re not scared about being creative because you’re just going to learn from it.

Kim: You mentioned your size in the European market, for example. I know that you recently moved buildings, correct? Earlier this year.

Matthew: We did. Yes.

Kim: Can you talk a little bit about why that move happened and what that new building has opened up for you?

Matthew: Yeah, sure. Since I’ve joined Travelers, I think we’ve moved four times. First time, I couldn’t wait to move. It was a building, we were on two separate floors and the floors didn’t really talk to each other. The walls were blue, not red. There was nothing around Travelers. Nothing said Travelers, which was quite surprising. But we moved and we moved into a building from there, which was, pre-COVID days, but it was all open plan, and it was about getting everyone to know what we actually did. So, we have three different parts of the business, and they didn’t really know what each part did. And it was about getting people together to work together and see that there was, we should sell Travelers as one business, not as three separate businesses. So, it’s trying to get people to work together. I hated being in an office. I’ve always, kind of, worked, sort of, open plan. I have amazing hearing so I can find out what’s going on without having to ask questions and I felt, in an office, I was shut off, and the only people came down to my office were in meetings. So, I’d be stuck in my office, penned in my office, meetings after meetings and I’d never get to see people, never get to really hear what was going on. So, we moved open plan and it was red everywhere. It was Travelers everywhere. Probably overkill on the Travelers logos, but it needed to be done and it was great. And then we came back, sort of, after COVID and time moves on, you know? It was quite a, it was a white and red environment. We had grown significantly. And we were very, very tight on space, very hard to find meeting rooms. So, we had an opportunity and then the new space was much, much bigger. And the, sort of, landscape in offices was, kind of, you’ve just come back from working at home, you’re back in an office environment. You don’t want to go back into a sterile office environment. So, come and get that halfway house between a, sort of, I don’t know, an airport lounge type of feel and a proper working environment. And make it feel professional. And for us in London, London has like a square mile, very famous thing called the “Square Mile,” of the City and all the insurance companies and brokers are in the same space. So, you’re not really emailing, you’re actually walking to someone else’s office and seeing. So, it needs to be that interactive space, but it also needs to be at the heart of that because, dare I say it, people are quite lazy and if you’re a long way away, a long way away means another 100 yards, if you’re not there, they won’t come and see you. So, we moved closer and it’s just been a massive success in terms of getting people back into the office. People love the space.

Kim: You know, you describe that it’s a space to collaborate. Is that really what the culture in the new space feels like? Do you see, on a day-to-day basis, folks sitting with each other? Not just in virtual meetings, but in-person meetings, having coffee, you know, what does that culture look like in person?

Matthew: Yeah, so, we have, I guess we have two ends of the office, and one is our reception area and a broker area. And the broker area for us is really important. We’ve never had one before. And this is effectively where we say to the brokers, ‘Come in, sit down. It’s an informal environment. Come and talk to us about the risks you’ve got and come and meet our people.’ And then, at the other end of the office, we have a large, by our standards, a large sort of area for staff to meet and, sort of, have lunch and things, but just having informal meetings there, we just didn’t have that space before. So, you see teams just coming together and then other people join them and nothing makes me more happy than seeing like a team of 20 people all having lunch together and it’s great. And we can just do ad hoc events there, which we couldn’t do before and just helping, you know, people that wouldn’t normally meet just sit down and get together. And it’s amazing how much you learn about the company and what other people do in their jobs. Just by spending half an hour having a cup of coffee or lunch with them.

Kim: Right. So, if it’s my first day at Travelers Europe and I walk in, I’m not just feeling like, ‘Here’s your desk.’

Matthew: Absolutely not. No, no, no, this is, it’s an all, sort of, and there’s a, you know, there’s a day you spend or, you know, 3 or 4 days a week you spend there. And we try and make it as great an experience as we can.

Kim: Excellent. And now I know obviously across Travelers enterprise, volunteerism, community outreach are central to the Travelers Promise. So, at Travelers Europe, can you share some of those unique volunteer opportunities or initiatives that you’re doing?

Matthew: Yeah. So, we, I know you have the same TV show over here as we do called Dragon’s Den (Shark Tank). And on Dragon’s Den, there was a company called OnHand. And OnHand is an app-based, charity, sort of, site that links you to different types of opportunities to help out in society. So, whether it’s listing, you know, people near where you live who need help just because they can’t get out, they’re not mobile, right up to big events where you’re going to help redecorate a school or things like that. So, we have that and that’s one of our major links into sources of places we can help. And through that we also, for every hour you spend, they plant a tree somewhere in the world. And then also through the, the, sort of City connections, so, Lloyd’s of London will work with local schools, whether it’s reading skills, we can volunteer for that. So, we have a whole range of almost individual contribution things you can do or team events you can do. We have a farm, city farm where people can go along and help there. So, it’s almost anything. Whatever your interest in terms of whether it’s green, whether it’s helping out in schools, and society and really just reaching out to the local communities where we are and helping them, but also pushing for their interest in insurance. Maybe they’re, you know, part of society that hasn’t necessarily seen a way into insurance or ever even thought about it. And it’s for us just to push gently and, sort of, say, well, you should think about coming, you know, work in the City because you’ve probably never thought about it but it’s a great opportunity.

Kim: Sure, absolutely. And you mentioned earlier in our conversation about developing the skills of your employees. What are some of those efforts that you make there and how are employees able to grow through their career?

Matthew: Yeah. I mean, the collaboration comes first, which is effectively, you know, we’ll try and put junior people with senior people, so they just learn and see how people operate and that’s a really important part of, you know, learning any job is seeing how other people do it, which is why it’s so important we get, you know, people in the office rather than just working at home doing, you know, working through their to-do list is great, but you don’t see how other people behave. And that, to me, is really important. That’s a real fundamental part I think of working is seeing how other people do it. But then we have lots and lots of resources, whether it’s videos, whether it’s podcasts, whether it’s, you know, materials we can read and we have career paths on our, you know, on our systems that effectively allow you to think, ‘This is where I want my career to take me. What are the right, sort of, training courses that I could do?’ And it’ll produce a curriculum for you to go through. So, even if the company hasn’t said to you, we think this is your next track, if you’re interested in doing any of these things, you can just go on, find the right course, and then learn at your own pace. And then obviously as we start bringing new technology, we’ll have special face-to-face training sessions, and we’ll talk people through it. So, yeah, a whole range of different things that either you can just pursue things you’re interested in, or there’s a specific career path that you’ve talked with your manager about. So, yeah, I can go and train myself up as an underwriter or something, which would be dangerous to the whole place if I did that.

Kim: Alright. So, if I come in and I, you know, have my first role at Travelers Europe, I don’t have to stay in that line. I could explore interests as I get to know people or as I am doing, you know, cross collaborative projects or…

Matthew: Yeah, I’m a key proponent of that. So, when I talk about agility of thought, yeah, for me, that’s, I want to test people about what they want to do. I see people, sort of, going two different routes. You either want to be the world’s expert at something, so you have a very narrow band of what you’re interested in doing, and we need that. We definitely need that. The other types of people are people that, yeah, maybe get a bit bored or something. So, you want to broaden out, try different things. And, for me, it’s testing where people want to go, where their interest really lies, because you want to keep people excited about what they do and I’m lucky enough to have… I started off as a lawyer. I never wanted to be a lawyer, strangely enough, I was told it was going to route into different things. So, for me, I’ve constantly tried to move my career and try and do different things all the time and prove that I’ve got different capabilities. So, for me, I love helping people do that because people helped me on my way. So, I’m trying to do the same thing and find avenues that, you know, people might go down that they’ve never really even thought of. So, I quite like, you know, suggesting to people they should try and do something and they look at me go, ‘Really?’ And you go, ‘Yeah, trust in yourself, you know? I can see it in you that you can do it. You just need to have that confidence and the opportunity to do it yourself.’

Kim: Yeah. Well, I mean, I was going to ask you what advice you’d give to somebody joining the insurance industry, but I think you just about said it right there.

Matthew: Well, there’s two things. Join a big company and join Travelers. It’s like, they’re one and the same thing. You know? The opportunities in a big company are huge. And, I think, sometimes, you know, you go to a small startup or something like that and yeah, you’ll do all the sorts of jobs because you have to, because there’s not that many people there, but you won’t see that you’re all learning together for the first time. If you come to somewhere like Travelers, you’ve got experts at doing things, so, the training you get is fantastic, the people you meet are fantastic and you see things done, and I said before, you see things at Travelers done really well. Nothing’s ever patched. It’s thought about, it’s done properly. And so, for me, my advice is always go to the biggest and the best you can find because from there, every time you go somewhere else, they’ll see a great company on your CV. And that helps. And for me, that’s Travelers.

Kim: Absolutely. Matthew, anything that we did not cover today that you want to mention?

Matthew: About the whole world? It’s not just about insurance. No, I think, just, you know, when you’re thinking about your career, I think over the next few years it’s going to change so much. And again, it comes back to, where would you start your career or where would you take it next? And I think, going to… I find insurance is fascinating because insurance is involved in everything. You know, people talk about it being the DNA of business in the sense that companies will only take risks if they know they’re not going to lose everything if it goes wrong. And again, I’m so fortunate in terms of falling into insurance. A lot of people fall into insurance from somewhere else and they go, ‘I don’t know how it happened, but I’m here, I’ve been here for 30 years sort of thing.’ I think I’ve been in insurance, you know, even as a private practice lawyer, I was still actually working in insurance and one of my first cases was actually for a company called St. Paul Fire and Marine, who I’d never heard of, and, of course, that’s one of the companies that founded Travelers. So, it’s this thing around… I’ve now been to 120 countries around the world. Everything that happens in the world… Watching the news is terrible because we’re involved in some shape or form, whether it’s an airplane, whether it’s a train, whether it’s filming, you know, Hollywood. Insurance is involved in all of that. So, the things you learn about in life are, life at Travelers or life in insurance, is it’s the whole span of everything that happens around the world and no other career really gives you that. You tend to be, you know, pigeonholed into doing one thing. You know, you work in the chemical industry or you work… In insurance, you’re involved in all those things. So, you find, you can find somewhere where your hobbies and what you find interesting means something in insurance. And I just don’t know of another career that gives you that.

Kim: Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. Okay, great. Well, I just want to say thank you so much for making the trip, because I know you did it just for our show.

Matthew: Absolutely.

Kim: You know, we really appreciate it and to all of our listeners out there, if you’d like to learn more about Travelers or Travelers Europe, you can visit our website. That’s travelers.com/careers and check it out. Matthew, thank you so much.

Matthew: Thank you, Kim.