Carol Murphy | Hub

Carol Murphy, executive vice president and North American casualty practice leader, Hub

A shift towards intentional inclusion is benefitting women in the insurance industry, says Carol Murphy, executive vice president and North American casualty practice leader at Hub.

“It’s the little things, like…being intentional about [including everyone] on the distribution list [for key emails], or everyone at a certain level should be invited to this meeting,” she tells Canadian Underwriter. “There’s more care taken around being intentional. That’s favorable.”

Yet, she notes “the proportion of women in senior leadership roles in insurance is still relatively light industrywide.” And Insurance is in line with the rest of the financial services industry in terms of income inequality.

Further, organizations’ efforts around sponsorship and mentorship remain uneven. “People have [mentors and] sponsors, but it’s not [always] organized and disciplined, especially if someone’s sponsor leaves the organization or retires, and then someone’s reporting into someone new,” Murphy says. “Dynamics can shift.”

Improvements are more noticeable around hiring and promotion transparency. Prior to joining Hub, Murphy recounts an interview process for a leadership role in which the other candidate was a man she’d worked with for many years. The company built a gender-balanced senior management panel, two women and two men, to interview them.

“I didn’t get that particular promotion but secured a different role instead, but it was very intentional and thoughtful that they did it that way, and it made me feel better about the fairness of that process.” Murphy says.

To raise the bar going forward, she suggests the insurance industry advance its promise to hold senior leaders truly accountable for team growth.

“It’s often been the case in our industry where folks are promoted based on their business skills, their ability to sell or secure new big clients…or make mergers and acquisitions,” Murphy tells CU. “Softer skills like mentorship and sponsorship were sort of a nice to have. Having accountability to develop individuals in the organization with disciplined succession planning and…offering the right training programs or business opportunities for people to grow, would be a good way to keep improving.”

Mentoring

Asked what she wished she’d learned earlier in her career, Murphy says she wishes she’d had mentoring to develop organizational political skills earlier in her career. While her colleagues who came from families with more similar business backgrounds grew up having such topics discussed over family dinners, as the child of a teacher, she didn’t have that same experience.

“There are those skills that sometimes people don’t tell you, like how to read the room, or [if] I’m going to be presenting my plan for [a new initiative] there might be people in the room that disagree with the plan. But if you don’t know that going in, it can sort of go off the rails,” says Murphy.

“[By contrast] I learned that it often helps to have one-on-ones with the people in the room ahead of time, find out their concerns and address those concerns in the overall plan.”

To get more women interested in insurance careers, Murphy suggests education tracks for younger students that include job shadowing or career fairs to help younger people understand the job opportunities within insurance businesses.

“Sometimes women think ‘I don’t really want to be in sales,’ but sales in our business is conceptual for an intangible product. You’re selling ideas and strategies quite often,” Murphy says. “Or often the broker’s role may be misunderstood and not perceived as a great fit by many young women, where in fact it’s been a very gratifying career to be creative in finding unique solutions and negotiating win-win outcomes for clients.