One of the less-heralded outcomes of the digital revolution in insurance is that it’s making the industry exciting for a new generation of digitally driven, data-devouring leaders. Just ask Lavanya Lingala, who has become an outspoken champion of the opportunities available to top tech talent in insurance.
Lingala rose to her position as VP, commercial operations and strategy for Mobilitas, a spin-off of CSAA Insurance Group focusing on rideshare insurance, after 10 years straight out of college with the company. At first, “I gave myself six months” to decide if she loved insurance, she says.
“Now I have no plans to leave the insurance industry whatsoever,” Lingala continues. “There's just so much opportunity within the insurance industry, which we haven't tapped into yet.”
Having gone to school for software engineering, Lingala completed a second degree in database management while getting her master’s at George Mason. She describes herself as “loving data mining” and being “fascinated by data methodologies and technology in general.” At CSAA, she found a place to apply those talents and interests and drive real change.
“Consumer needs are changing, and the only way you can tap into it is by understanding what the data suggests to you,” she says.
Lingala’s career at CSAA took her back and forth between product responsibility and analytics roles, which gave her the breadth of knowledge to be tapped by the company to launch the tech platform for Mobilitas. Designed from the ground up, Lingala took what the data told her about rideshare drivers -- the target audience for the new group -- to build a digital platform for them.
“The whole sharing economy is on the verge of being redefined. We fully believe that insurance should actually be fueling the innovation that's going out there,” she says. “How can we be creative and innovative? There's no benchmarks, there's not a company that's already tried and worked. They're all trying different things out. And it was fascinating to me to be able to contribute at that level and build something from scratch and be creative with these evolving businesses.”
In addition to the tech infrastructure, Lingala also leads strategic partnerships for Mobilitas. She was lauded by her co-workers for her adeptness in negotiating with one of the early partners in the nascent company, quickly learning the reinsurance and financial terms required to close the largest premium deal in CSAA’s history. (Mobilitas declined to name the customer.)
That and other deliverables related to launching a new brand to support a new product have pushed the insurance industry to be able to iterate faster, Lingala says.
“We don’t always have three or six months to sit and whiteboard. It's collective, all hands on deck work,” she says. “There's a lot of open dialogue and that mindset, that attitude that you need to be able to pivot and be nimble so we can adapt to the new information we're getting on a daily basis.”
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Nominating executive: Eric Ummel, GM, Mobilitas Insurance
What they said: "Lavanya possesses five qualities that give her C-suite potential – intellectual capacity, intellectual curiosity, the ability to think critically, humility and drive. She is not a linear thinker – she is constantly connecting dots, or trying to connect dots. Leaders with C-suite potential must be able to contemplate multiple dimensions of a problem in order to provide strategic leadership and direction to multi-disciplinary organizations."
