Jamie Lee is chief service officer for Aflac. A portion of that conversation is produced below. Lee will speak at Arizent NEXT on May 18 about these and other topics.
Digital Insurance: Tell us a little bit about your career at Aflac.
Jamie Lee: My career spans so many different areas in the company. I’m born and raised here in Columbus, Georgia, starting, literally answering phones in our call center. I spent time on the sell side for a number of years and then asked to lead many of our transformation type projects. That was all before I took the chief service officer role.
DI: So what’s unique about this portion of your career?
JL: I’m on the customer side of all that transformation now. I feel like I not only have the broad perspective that I need, but I now know how all of these things work together ultimately to create a better experience for our customers.
DI: How has the supplemental insurance business been disrupted by the insurtech wave?
JL: Early in insurance, you really saw the movers and shakers more in P&C. We now see more and more of these non-traditional carriers getting into the [supplemental] space. We've created so many alliances now, and we've created our own incubation process now where we try to disrupt ourselves. It’s called Hatch, and that’s where we're bringing new ideas, new concepts, new things that potentially could be disruptive to us.
DI: What advantages do you think Aflac has over the new entrants who are starting from scratch?
JL: Lucky for Aflac, we have such a tremendous brand awareness. But it’s one thing to have a brand, and another for customers to know what you do. And that has been a big focus of our marketing, we have heard from our research that customers may confuse what we do with major medical or with other types of insurance.
DI: Aflac has been a leader in hiring women to its executive team. How has the company been able to have that diverse leadership tradition?
JL: is something that it starts at the top with [CEO] Dan Amos. He says, “I'm a 69 year old white male, and I don't need to surround myself with 69 year old white males.” He’s a leader that stands for diversity and says, ultimately, that's how you're going to have a high-performing team, because you don't have everybody thinking alike, looking alike, acting alike.
DI: How does that play out in the digital transformation of Aflac? I noticed that Hatch's director is a woman, and having the innovation organization being led by a woman at this juncture in the industry is unique.
JL: Everyone's competing to provide the best possible experience. And if you don't have that diverse background, I think it limits the ideas and the thought processes, the thought leadership that you're going to get around that space. I've seen how it's allowed us to attract new talent. That's one of the first things that people go and look for now to see, are you really walking the talk on diversity? And when people go out and look at our website and they see the diversity in our leadership team, it speaks volumes.
