Spotlight on…is an initiative of WICI (Women in Credit Insurance) aiming at highlighting females working in the Trade Credit Insurance business. Every month, a new interview article will be published on ICISA website.
This month on our spotlight we have Chris Hall, Senior Director and Global Head of Financial Institutions Sales for the CPRI team at WTW. Before joining WTW in 2021, he was a Senior Underwriter at Liberty Specialty Markets and prior to that spent 13 years in banking in a variety of roles at both Lloyds Bank and the Royal Bank of Scotland. He has also been a board member of the International Trade and Forfaiting Association (ITFA) since 2015.
What was your main motivation to support / endorse WICI?
I am a firm believer in all types of equality and try to role model this to my children. I would like my son to be an advocate for the same and I would like my daughter (and everyone’s daughters) to have the same opportunities that I have and have had; this motivates me to support WICI.
Why do you believe in gender diversity in TCI?
In my working experience, insurance and banking have been historically male dominated. While I believe that things have started changing for the better, there is further to go. I have learnt a huge amount from working with some inspiring female colleagues over the years, which reinforces some of the statistics I quoted when moderating a panel on future proofing trade finance earlier this year – that gender diverse companies are 15% more likely to notice higher financial returns and diverse teams are 87% better at making decisions. If we can improve gender diversity in TCI, we should have a better and more successful working environment.
What are your top 3 tips for a successful career in the trade credit insurance industry?
We remain in a people business and people buy from people they know, like and trust, so the ability to move from having a first contact with someone through to creating rapport and then cementing a tangible relationship is the best way to do that. This works in terms of clients, networks and more.
Listening is an underrated skill. No matter what part of the TCI environment you work in, taking the time to listen and then act can only be a good thing.
Be brave. Always be risk aware and thoughtful about what you do, but history is littered with examples of people who were brave and succeeded. You can always talk to your network or a mentor to give you extra comfort if need be.
What is the biggest challenge facing leaders today?
The pace of change is huge. The working environment is changing so rapidly that being alert to that is critical. In an insurance sense – the rise of cyber demonstrates this. Not so many years ago, it was a relatively nascent class of business. Now it is growing and responding to challenges and claims.
What is the most important lesson you’ve learnt during your career?
You never stop learning! There may be times during your career where you feel that your learning journey plateaus – in my experience this is the time when you are assimilating what you have learnt to date and you then turn the figurative corner and you feel you are learning a multitude of new things before in due course you reach your next plateau and so on.
What do you do to ensure that you continue to grow and develop as a leader?
I follow my own advice, so I regularly seek, listen to, and reflect upon feedback from colleagues, managers and mentors. I also try to keep learning, be that by attending in-house technical teach-ins, listening to podcasts, reading relevant books and articles and going to conferences.
What is your favourite part of your job?
The two things I love (and need!) in any role is to work with and develop people, and to have a client facing role. These have formed the key plank of my personal development plan for some time now. The fact that I can have both of these facets of my role and at the same work with a huge variety of companies ranging from local to global and financial institution to corporates never ceases to delight me.
What is the best advice you would give to an aspiring leader?
Be open to feedback, be prepared to be wrong and listen! You will inevitably make mistakes – we all do – but it is how you learn from it that will demonstrate your real strengths as a leader.
What is one frequent mistake you witness leaders making?
I have been fortunate to work with a number of great leaders and have learnt things from them all. I have seen occasions where when looking to bring out a new product or initiative, that some leaders have tried to make it completely perfect. Whilst a laudable endeavour, the opportunity window has closed during this time and much of the input has therefore been somewhat wasted. The lesson here is to put in the good thinking, but bring out a proof of concept or similar at an early stage.
How did you get to where you are today?
I could cite some of the platitudes about hard work and making one’s own luck etc, but being open to change (and brave, as above) is probably the main thing. Moving from a career in banking to underwriting, and then crossing the aisle to the broking side were not necessarily on the PDP at the time, but listening to the opportunity, asking questions about it and having the courage of my convictions were the key points.
What are the biggest challenges facing our industry?
The continual rate of change and broad geopolitical volatility is a challenge, but also an opportunity. We are at a time when we can adapt with our clients’ evolving expectations, and regulatory changes and succeed. We must stay relevant; we must be easy to transact with and be a trusted advisor to our clients. Disintermediation is a key challenge and the entrance of big market players into our industry (e.g. Apple, Amazon, Bloomberg, Google etc) could well be the next frontier.
