Insurance coverage isn’t attractive. In case you ask Zurich’s Chief Buyer Officer Conny Kalcher, she’ll inform you in any other case. But it surely didn’t begin that approach for her.
Kalcher joined the corporate after a 33-year profession on the toy big Lego. The industries are like chalk and cheese—and their clients, too.
But Kalcher noticed a possibility for Zurich to coach 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 suppose it will be males in fits, being very formal and doing issues in a selected approach. However that’s by no means the case,” Kalcher advised 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 right this moment. However beneath Kalcher, who joined Zurich 5 years in the past, the insurer has been reworking for the fashionable world—one that’s threatened by local weather change, cyber-attacks, and an getting old inhabitants.
Classes from Lego
Lego’s repute as a prime toymaker precedes it. However Kalcher was on the firm when issues regarded completely different.
“Lego is a really wealthy model. In case you dig into the Lego’s historical past, it’s stuffed with sturdy narrative traditions, model understanding [and] buyer understanding.. it wasn’t all the time like that,” she mentioned.
By means of Kalcher’s three-decade profession main advertising and shopper expertise efforts at Lego, there have been low factors for the corporate when it was verging on chapter—one thing that feels unthinkable right this moment 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 buyers and tried to go after what they needed. In that sense, she doesn’t see insurance coverage as very completely different.
“After all, the 2 industries are tremendous completely different,” Kalcher mentioned. “Nevertheless, clients are clients, and clients typically need the identical [thing].”
Courtesy Of Conny Kalcher, Group Chief Buyer Officer, Zurich Insurance coverage, 2024
Folks need to really feel catered to in a approach that matches their wants and existence. However typically, that will get misplaced in insurers’ sea of technical jargon.
In Zurich’s case, though the corporate had seen exceptional international development by 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.
“Once I joined, the aim was ‘we’re right here to guard you.’ Guess what? Each insurance coverage firm in the entire world is there to guard you. That doesn’t make you stand out,” Kalcher mentioned. And that’s the place she noticed her function develop into key: making the corporate extra relatable and undoing the “unhealthy narrative” insurance coverage had earned over time.
Altering the way it’s performed
Kalcher’s imaginative and prescient for the Swiss firm is to make it the “Apple of Insurance coverage.” 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 in every of its secrets and techniques is consistency. That’s most likely why the corporate’s devices are probably the most broadly used world over, from children to the aged. Zurich needs 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 technology that has solely ever identified the world by expertise.
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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 alter its methods and make insurance coverage extra interesting to its youthful viewers.
“We use TikTok in some international locations to speak with that technology, and that works very properly. Instagram as properly,” Kalcher mentioned. The objective is to be enjoyable, participating 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 varied matters, from defending oneself financially whereas on trip to busting myths about automotive insurance coverage. Since 2021, when Zurich launched its Instagram deal with, it mentioned it’s seen a 96% development in its follower rely. In the meantime, for the reason that launch of its TikTok the next yr, it’s seen a 430% development.
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Kalcher’s considering is straightforward: “It’s about beginning to develop into related by displaying up within the locations the place these clients are. Then, it’s about having the appropriate presents for these clients as properly.”
The corporate can be simplifying the way it communicates with folks utilizing AI, making it simpler to search out info and making the data simpler to know.
Finally, Kalcher needs folks to see Zurich as a novel firm that’s altering for its clients.
“I would love our clients to begin speaking about us as completely different, as actually being there for them,” she mentioned. “That may be the final word accolade for us.”
