Heather Deichler entered the insurance industry in a way that’s not only unique for insurance, but unique from an overall corporate perspective. She started out as a lobbyist for the industry, but was fascinated by the business itself and decided that she wanted to be a part of it. Usually, this journey is the other way around, but Deichler hasn’t looked back.
“Sitting in that seat, it made me very interested in the business side of things, which is why I decided fairly early in my career that I wanted to focus more in the business space and moved out of the government relations role,” she says.
Deichler is currently head of MoneyGuard product management, a hybrid long-term care and life insurance product. The long-term care sector has weathered several storms over the past few decades, so when a recent dip in interest rates threatened the viability of the product, she was pressed into action. She led the development of a variable linked benefit product, MoneyGuard Market Advantage, a first for Lincoln. And she did it all under the additional pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not only did she have to work in a digital environment for the bulk of the development and launch period, but she also had the foresight to create a fully digital experience for Market Advantage.
“Advisors were all out of their office, none of their customers wanted to come and meet and sit across the desk from them and fill out an application and buy insurance. But because we had built digital point of sale tools, electronic applications, marketing collateral, we were very easily able to push content to them so they could continue to sell,” she says. “And as we knew, as we were building this product all of last year, we knew we were going to be launching into a digital world. So as we thought about our launch plan and go to market strategy, it was, ‘how do we make a big splash and be able to deliver content to these advisors who were sitting at home, to these customers who are sitting at home?’”
Through the high-stress time of launching a new product into an uncertain world, Deichler distinguished herself as a leader by synthesizing opinions from various stakeholders and delivering clear, confident decisions, nominating executive Mike Burns says. Despite being a relatively new employee (Deichler joined Lincoln in late 2019), her instincts told her the time was now to set an example for what the company’s products could look like going forward.
“In a way, the pandemic helped get some of that momentum going. It became a matter of trying to deliver, because we knew that it was a time to really pivot within the industry versus sticking with what we've always done, because it worked so well previously,” she says. “It was that willingness to take that leap of faith, knowing that we had to pivot at some point and probably now is a good time to consider it.”
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Nominating executive: Mike Burns, SVP and head of life solutions
What they said: “Heather is smart and savvy and consistently laser-focused on the objectives of the business while consistently achieving top results. Over the course of her career, she has developed an exceedingly impressive portfolio of skills, knowledge and experience that give her a unique perspective on the business.”
