Visionary and Innovators Panel

Join us for an insightful discussion featuring prominent female leaders shaping the future of the industry. This panel will explore groundbreaking ideas, emerging technologies, and visionary strategies driving innovation in the digital insurance landscape.


Transcription:

Patricia L. Harman (00:09):
So while I have given you their names and their titles, I thought what I would do is have each of these ladies introduce themselves to you and give you a little bit of information about how she got into the industry, maybe a brief recap of her insurance industry because none of us walks out of college and walks into any one of these positions. And then just kind of give us an update on where she is now. So Mary, I'll start with you if you don't mind. Sorry. That's what I get.

Mary Boyd (00:37):
Good Morning everybody. How are you? I'm Mary Boyd. I am very recently the CEO of Hiscox USA. I just left Plymouth Rock as the president, CEO of Plymouth Rock Assurance every six years, which is a wonderful opportunity as well. I've been in the industry 30 years and it's getting louder by the second calibration. I've been in the industry 30 years. I started my career as an actuary. I'm not designated, I revert to this. I liberated myself about six years into it, halfway through the exam process really I loved the numbers and applying math and analytics to helping understand the business, but what I really loved to do was build things and lead teams. And when I made that move to become what is probably now known as a product owner and a business analyst, it really was an accelerant to my career. And I ended up doing a lot of things within Chubb, including building their predictive analytics practice and capabilities there. And that led to my first turnaround and 15 years of turnarounds. And after doing a lot of fixer uppers, I landed at Plymouth Rock and did a lot of building and well now here I am doing my next build

Patricia L. Harman (01:56):
Ashley. Oh me. Oh, sorry. No,

Ashley Phillips (01:59):
That's okay. So I actually started out in accounting. So I graduated with an accounting degree and I did that for a few years and that led into an opportunity in an insurance agency to do acquisitions. So I started working a lot in the financial portion of that. My love of numbers and data kind of eventually led into, actually for the first 15 years of my career I spent in accounting and FP and a and really looking at organizations and the functionality of organization that just by chance led into, well, how do I make that data work in a process and in a platform. So that led into operations. I started getting involved in operations and then eventually that led into strategy. And then how do you implement that strategy? So I've been in the industry for about 25 years in the non-standard space, but I've taken every opportunity that's been presented to me and Durst really learned from those things. So

Patricia L. Harman (02:58):
Megan.

Megan Sharpe (02:59):
Sure, I'm the Vice President of Marketing Media and Strategy at Gerber Life Insurance, and I started at a direct marketing company, so didn't necessarily know I'd landed insurance, but went from direct marketing, similar theme, really loved analytics and the data and being able to spend dollars in marketing and understand the actions that came out of those dollars. I ended up at a IG, found my way to Gerber Life Insurance and started learning the life insurance business and really saw a lot of value in what life insurance can provide consumers. Gerber life is an incredible brand, has a strong brand name similar to the baby food company. And we have a great mission in providing protection to families that they need. So it's been a great journey for me. Digital transformation, as we talked about with the keynote earlier today, digital is really at the heart of all of our customers and it's exciting to be able to bring a direct marketing organization plus an insurance company to consumers and make simple products accessible to them, to the middle market.

Patricia L. Harman (04:08):
And Lauren,

Lauren Dieterich (04:09):
Good Morning everyone. I'm Lauren Dieterich, Chief Operating Officer with Arch Insurance North America. I actually landed in insurance randomly. I did at college with a computer science and electrical engineering degree and had always intended to be a technology consultant. The company I had accepted a job offer with ended up going out of business before I had a chance to start and a friend at a IG new, so open positions. And so I actually started at AIG as a developer after about two years in technology. I really wanted to get exposure to the underwriting side of the business. And so I spent about a decade underwriting public company, DNO insurance, and loved it. Much like Ashley said, my passions then turned to as I was leading teams, how do I deploy technology and best practices to make those teams most efficient and effective? So I naturally transitioned into more strategic and initiative oriented roles eventually then transitioning into full operations leadership roles. And my passion is really now leading cross-functional teams in driving holistic change and making our teams and companies more efficient, effective, and productive. So the background of technology and underwriting or business and process has really all come together and I absolutely love what I do today.

Patricia L. Harman (05:34):
So as you can see, we have a number of different perspectives that we'll be able to share over the next half hour or so. So what factors do you think are having the greatest impact on the insurance industry at this point in time? And we can look at gen AI, the ins, insurtech, transformation, digital adoption, talent challenges. There are just so many different issues. So Lauren, I'll start with you first. What do you, factors do you think are having the greatest impact on the industry at this point?

Lauren Dieterich (06:05):
I think without a doubt, AI and gen AI are getting a lot of hype, but in terms of actual impact right now, I really feel like insurtechs have driven the industry to a innovative and exciting place that insurance has not always been. But from a carrier perspective, I think the practical reality is that digital adoption is what most of us are grappling with right now. There is a macro trend where carriers are trying to revamp their enterprise operating models and embrace modernization and digitization. And many of us are going through underwriting transformations and claims transformations or finance transformations all at the same time in an effort to bring our businesses forward because the new technologies are going to require us to have a very strong technical foundation that is scalable, modular, and able to plug and play with these new capabilities that are out there. So for me, I think digital adoption is the most critical factor right now.

Patricia L. Harman (07:10):
Alright, Mary, what are your thoughts on that?

Mary Boyd (07:12):
I think I agree with what you're saying. I'm going to take a slightly different, an additional one though from a different perspective. And that is a bit in terms of from an industry perspective, a bit of a core component of our business, which is also the underwriting perspective, the access to our business. Over the course of the past couple of years, we have been facing a lot of impacts from the climate, the regulatory environment, from the cost of inflation, just economic impacts that are putting real pressure on our business. When we are collecting our premiums, we're really covering causes of loss and expense. And although our companies are basically viewed by consumers, I always think a little bit like college students that look at parents a bit like these annoying overprotective folks and they're sort of naively principled until the parents run out of money.

(08:15):
And we're like the companies that run out of money. And so as the inflation has put pressure on our industries, it's really created a capacity crisis, which is serious and that has put pressure. And it's not just about California quake or wildfire or wind in Texas and Florida. This is a crisis that is hitting property, commercial and personal. It's hitting places that are simple as when I hear national companies say we're good everywhere except for California, Florida, New Jersey and New York, and they don't mean the coast. They mean like Somerset. Most of you don't know where Somerset is because it doesn't matter. It's in the middle of New Jersey, right? It's just a central normal place. I used to live right near there. So I'm not picking on anyone but myself. And so it's just one of those things where access to normal non-cat risk is becoming an issue.

(09:14):
And for companies, whether it's we're a public policy instrument as insurance, it's highly regulated as a result of that, very importantly. But that also makes our ability to respond to any of these economic pressures very slow compared to anything else that we buy. And so the pricing that the gentleman was talking about just before us, that happened quickly for everyone else, happens slowly for us. But what that's happened when that's combined with real life staffing issues in the regulatory departments, political stuff aside, is that it took a long time. And that compounding effect on inflation has put us in a tough situation. I've never in 30 years expected to see as many companies not either go out of business or not have a buyer for their business, for their customers, as we've seen in the past 24 months. And it's really distressing. And so what's important then is that we're ready if our loss ratios are distressed, that our expense ratios are resilient.

(10:21):
And that is where digital innovation ties into this because whether it's now during these periods of very distressing inflation severity or other types of catastrophic situations we'll face with weather, et cetera, or in the future when Shangri-la hits and everything's beautiful and when everyone predicts that safety is going to happen and her cars and there will be less losses should that ever happen, then the cost of our expense ratio, our expense ratios are going to have to lower and that'll be a great situation and we're going to need the digital innovation to help us there too. And so I do think that all these things that are faced that are facing us right now, we're going to make it through the math of our business will carry us through. But it's been really hard. It's been hard on our independent agents and brokers. It's been hard on the direct businesses. We're going to make it through what we do, but that's my other on my mind.

Patricia L. Harman (11:22):
Well, and thank you because there are so many different factors that are affecting the industry at this point in time. So that was a great overview,

Mary Boyd (11:28):
The collision.

Patricia L. Harman (11:31):
So you each work in different aspects of the industry, but what have been some of the biggest changes you've seen over the last say 10 to 15 years? And did anything that has occurred actually surprise you? Ashley, I'll start with you.

Ashley Phillips (11:44):
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the gentleman that was here before. I mean, I could have listened to that all day. I'm in the auto industry. Everything that he said resonated with us. We ourselves at am max have embarked on digital transformation. I think all companies right now, I mean I heard it all day yesterday, I've heard it today, are really embracing those digital platforms to do several things within their organization, improving efficiencies, enhancing the customer experience, streamlining processes. It's the name of the game right now. I think another thing too is really understanding what the customer expectation is within that customer experience right now, being a differentiator in the customer experience space, especially in not on standard auto industry is huge. I mean, look at the numbers that he showed. I mean, we have to really be able to stand out. Customers are demanding things like transparency, they're looking for convenience, they're looking for speed in the way that they transact.

(12:41):
So there's been a lot of investment and development in the digital platform, online platforms, quoting platforms, different things like that, mobile apps. So we're really spending a lot of time with that investment. I think something that may have surprised, especially in the last few days as well in talking with everybody is the adoption of AI and ml, which I know we'll probably talk about here a lot throughout this conference. The speed to which different parts of our industry, whether it's claims, whether it's underwriting, whether it's as a non-auto or even a carrier really looking at AI and ML and figuring out how to implement that into their process, into their business.

Patricia L. Harman (13:23):
So Megan, what were your thoughts on that in terms of what have been some of the biggest changes that you've seen?

Megan Sharpe (13:32):
Sure. I'll take a different marketing perspective. So thinking of consumers first, consumers we're trying to deliver them life insurance products direct to consumer. We've been doing it for quite a long time. 15 years ago we had non-existence of things like Facebook and looking at today how people search in Google, they're getting returned. Generative AI answers that changes the game and how we're buying keywords. So I think that will continue to change. The most surprising is the start of my career. We sent a direct mail piece, they had an application, they replied, we processed it. It's very different today. Everything needs to be omnichannel. And I guess I could have foreshadowed that what happened, but the speed at which it's happened, people having devices in their hands and being able to, we spoke about auto quotes earlier today, that's not my industry. But getting a fast quote and being able to bind a new policy immediately is not necessarily where I think the entire insurance industry thought they would be.

(14:36):
So a lot of the connecting of phone, digital paper, people want immediate answers and they want to know within the customer experience what's happening to them. Are we making a decision? It's unusual for us in insurance that typically people buy something, they get it. We actually decide whether we'll give that to you, so we have to decision on it. Where are they in the process? Do we have to get labs from this individual? So there's a lot of complexity in our products and do consumers really understand that? Do they need to understand that if we make it simple enough? So I think that's been the real change from a marketing perspective.

Patricia L. Harman (15:12):
I think also in terms of the use of technology, there's an expectation of more transparency, and I think you're right in terms of they want immediate answers, immediate information. And so for everyone, that's been a bit of a change. So what's the secret to positioning your businesses to be innovative while ensuring that you continue to serve the best interests of your customers? Lauren, I'll start with you on that one.

Lauren Dieterich (15:39):
Sure. So as I have built out the operations function at Arch, I've really focused on having a large portion of our operations team focused on optimizing the current business and maintaining what the customer service needs are. And then we have, I'll say the other 50% focused on how do we drive the business forward. Building that technology foundation I mentioned has been so important. We have established a North star so that all of the functions in the company are moving towards that same vision and we're really harnessing the power of all of the teams working together. But I think it's very important to actually have separate resources looking at how do I move the business forward and innovate, and then how do I maintain and optimize my current business? If you've got people trying to do too many things at once, nothing really gets done effectively. I would also add that with innovation, we really have been very intentional about how we're pursuing innovation. When there is a technology such as gen AI that comes out, we canvas the leadership for ideas of where that could add value. But then we're very intentional about only picking a couple pilot areas again, so that the investment is ultimately going to deliver value and that we're not spreading resources too thin.

Patricia L. Harman (17:01):
Yeah. Megan, I saw you kind of agreeing with some of what Lauren was saying. What are you seeing or what do you think, especially being from the marketing perspective, because that's going to be something you'll really be attuned to. Then

Megan Sharpe (17:12):
I was nodding successively on, we know we have compliance updates and there's sort of things we have to do to fix and having a different group that does innovation and that if you're constantly prioritizing those things against each other, how can you ever can't argue with regulatory updates or compliance needs? So being able to drive innovation in pretty large companies where there's an incredible amount of business happening, but needing to have a sort of ring fence innovation area to keep up with some of the insurtechs or other things that are pushing our industry forward. We have to be innovative, but we also have to service our behemoth companies that are behind us.

Patricia L. Harman (17:56):
So Mary, and from your perspective, how do you position businesses to innovate while maintaining or ensuring that they can continue to serve the best interests of your customers?

Mary Boyd (18:06):
Sure. So from my seat, I think what I try to do is put in the structure so that the mindset of the teams that whether it's my officers or their teams and directors, that we're all operating with the principal of putting that customer first and then making things as simple as possible so that the experience could be really super and the meeting the customer where they are. Concept is something that we've lived into for a very, very long time. When it comes to prioritizing our portfolio of spend and the way we work, I would say it's analogous to what the two ladies were saying, right? So there's always a core amount of a core we need to get our work done in terms of managing the product, doing compliance, those kinds of things. And so then thinking about how we manage our portfolio in terms of what we need to do in terms of business as usual as compared to really discretionary and deepening our relationships or improving operations excellence or those kind of things are really critical.

(19:11):
And so that's when we're making those decisions on discretionary spend is where this innovation principle has to come into play. And so when we're having discussions around that, that's when I rely upon people like Paul Measly who's here as a chief claims officer, is going to talk later when he's leading his strategic vision for claims on how to transform and think about when a customer's coming in with a first notice of loss, how do we anticipate what they need and make that experience great and set up the very first moment they're going to tell us about what happened to set up as it's the first pass off to the right move. So we're going to invest in doing that versus making our screens look better. Those are how we spend our dollars matters. And so prioritizing things with that customer in mind becomes that mindset becomes as important as having it more important than having an innovation lab for us.

Patricia L. Harman (20:10):
Yeah, I can totally understand that. So this is definitely our visionary panel. So I'm asking what are you currently watching that you believe could impact the industry in the next one to three years? And it's funny, I used to ask this question of people and I would say, oh, what do you see in the next five to 10 years? And because of covering technology, it's like what do you see in the next 12 to 18 months? So I'll say, what are you currently impacting? Because what happens now may have a ripple effect and it may be just in a couple of years. So Ashley, I'll ask you first. So what are you watching? What are you seeing that you think might impact the industry?

Ashley Phillips (20:47):
Before I answer that, I wanted to add one more thing from what you ladies were talking about real fast. Just from an agency standpoint. One thing that we've invested in our organization, especially in the operations group, is a team that's focused on just the customer success. And it's not just the customer success of the customers that are out external, it's the internal customer success with platforms. As you guys were talking, it started making me think all the piloting and the testing that we're doing before we launch into things, it's so expensive and we've got to get out there and do these innovative things, but I think it is really important to take the time to pilot. It takes time to have a team that's dedicated to understanding those measurements internally. So I just wanted to add that that's fine. Some things that we're watching.

(21:29):
So again, I think this might be a little different perspective because we're in the non-auto space, but one of them was brought up yesterday, one was brought up today, telematics and UBI user-based insurance. For us, it's kind of interesting. These are not things that are typically in line with our customer base. These are not things that are typically don't assist in the pricing with a non-standard auto customer. But for me, it's something in our company at AMAX that we really want to understand. And I spoke with a lady yesterday with a telematics organization and she mentioned getting a group of industry people together to talk about what that future is. I love that. I want to be part of it. I think it's really interesting to understand how that's going to impact that non-standard space in the future and what happens to our customer that the lines get blurred between non-standard and standard in the future if carriers start to adopt these types of things. I know we're probably a little ways away from that, but those are a couple of things that we look at for sure.

Patricia L. Harman (22:29):
Great. Mary, what are you kind of looking at and watching?

Mary Boyd (22:32):
Sure. From a technology perspective, AI is absolutely on my mind. It is one of the most exciting things that I've seen really come in a long time in terms of where we're going next because it truly, that combined with the ability to use the data storage opportunities and cloud storage now isn't just the ability to store lots of data. The capabilities that are within those storage mechanisms are really now beyond what have existed a few years ago. And so we are an industry that is so encumbered by legacy systems and that are being, even when they're upgraded, there's things that we all like to do that are difficult to do and honestly have created an entire industry of insurtech in FinTech, which everyone, most people that know me, know that I'm an enormous supporter of. I think it's fantastic. AI is absolutely going to be one of the places that allows us to accelerate what the insurance industry is capable of doing with all the great minds that we have and to order to accelerate that. And so I'm thrilled about that. We just have to learn how to do that safely and carefully. And when we do that, there's a whole lot that we can do for our industry and for our communities in a great way.

Patricia L. Harman (23:58):
And a shameless plug for AI and our round tables this afternoon, you should check them out because that'll be the focus of one of them for sure. Sorry, Megan, what are you currently watching at this point in time?

Megan Sharpe (24:12):
I don't have that much more to add beyond. It's definitely ai, and it's not just our companies that are going to accelerate because of AI and how we can leverage it in our operations, but also our consumers expectations that things are that much quicker. They're all becoming comfortable with leveraging generative AI tools. And I think that it's going to accelerate how we have to use it, how we have to deliver things faster, and just expectations, consumer expectations just keep ratcheting up and as other industries adapt it. I think the insurance industry has done an incredible job of coming together and thinking of ways to use AI within our everyday business. I've been very impressed with my own company and how we're safely figuring out how to use a very new technology that's not always been the insurance industry that's pushing forward quite as much. But I think the consumer expectations along with that, whether consumers know they're doing that, there's a different speed of business that's going to be expected and we're just going to have to be there to service it.

Patricia L. Harman (25:17):
So I've been covering the insurance industry some aspect of it for almost for about 30 years. Wow. I shouldn't say that. Anyway, so I've seen a lot of changes and what I want to know from you is what excites you the most about the possibilities of the insurance industry going forward, whether it's new technology or the new generation of professionals that we're bringing in the impact of a more diverse workforce, autonomous, I mean autonomous vehicles. There are just so many different ways we could go with this, but Ashley, from your perspective, what are you seeing and what excites you?

Ashley Phillips (25:51):
Some things that excite me, I'll go with the, this will be hand in hand with something else. I think it's the AI and EML, how we can use that in our businesses, how easily we're adopting these types of things. And it does take time. I've been in the industry for a really long time as well, and when I started out, everything was still on paper. Our biggest advertising Mecca, I think was telling Megan this yesterday was the yellow Pages. Right now over 50% of our advertising is coming from a digital perspective. So things are completely different today. I think the exciting part is that how much our industry is enveloping all of these new things. It's great to be a part of something like that where we can look at our systems, our platforms, our processes, our people, our products, and envelop all of these new things into that.

Patricia L. Harman (26:46):
Mary, what excites you?

Mary Boyd (26:47):
Yeah, I'm going to build on that because actually I think the fact that our industry now with the technologies that can be applicable to our industry without somebody having to have come up through customer service or some technical capability in order to then learn a new skillset to apply that in the industry, that paradigm has been blown apart. And so that will allow us to attract talent and keep talent longer. I mean, many of us here have lived in companies where we've lost talent, great talent because they've just been frustrated with our technology. How many people here has somebody quit because they said, I just can't stand the technology anymore. Young people, we all have. It's upsetting. I think that we're going to have a place where that doesn't happen for that reason as much hopefully. Or we are going to be able to get access to talent that would've gone to a completely different type of part of vertical and bring them and keep them in our space and we're going to be better for it. So that's really exciting.

Patricia L. Harman (27:55):
So along with that, when we think about the art of the possible, what innovation, transformation or type of technology do you think will have the most profound impact on the industry? So Mary, I'll let you start on that because that kind of dovetails in with what you were just sharing.

Mary Boyd (28:11):
Sure. I mean, I think from generally across all aspects of the industry, AI will have that because it gives us when we have more unstructured data than almost anything, right? I mean, the more we can imagine, which is why so many of these companies are coming to the insurance industry. Why? Because whether it's in commercial lines, certainly has it, personal lines has a lot of it, but commercial lines has tons of it. And so being able to capture that and turn that into something that is more usable is enormously powerful. And then so that's absolutely one area of great excitement, I think.

Patricia L. Harman (28:55):
Alright, great Lauren,

Lauren Dieterich (28:56):
What do you Sure.

(28:58):
I feel similar it's going to go on. I stopped myself.

Mary Boyd (29:00):
You see me.

Lauren Dieterich (29:00):
Really, AI and gen AI is the most exciting technology and has the capacity to really transform what we're doing. I really think about that from an employee perspective and an internal efficiency standpoint and really driving job satisfaction. I think what we're going to be able to do with AI will distill most jobs down to decision making. And you get to take out all of the non-value add processing and work that people are doing. I draw on my days as a d and o underwriter and the hundreds and hundreds of pages of public filings and analyst reports and news articles that you need to call through to get to risk factors and a decision on an account. And gen AI is going to be able to do that for us in a matter of seconds. And so the underwriter's experience now is so much more gratifying, being able to really just dig into what are the risk factors instead of hours and hours of reading through documents. And I can think of many other examples, but at any level in any job, I think we're going to start to see AI having tremendous impacts in helping with that work.

Patricia L. Harman (30:11):
I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago and they were talking about the impact of AI and how long it'll be before it's smarter than all of us and how it will really be able to make all kinds of decisions that we just can't even fathom at this point in time. And there were two timeframes that they gave. One was 2025, which is amazingly close, and the other was 2030. So it'll be interesting to see how it develops going forward. So Ashley, I'm going to ask you too, when you think about the art of the possible and innovation, what do you think is going to have the most profound impact on the industry?

Ashley Phillips (30:47):
Yeah, I mean, these two ladies really touched on a lot of it. The only thing I would add to that is getting more specific in the AI area, conversational AI is something that I'm looking at all the time from an operational perspective. We're really replacing a traditional bot and doing something that's more conversational with a customer, I think can rightsize staffing. I think it can actually help an agent have a better personalized experience with a customer by collecting some of that data upfront ahead of that call. So I think it's extremely exciting to figure out how do we improve the processes? How do we improve that customer engagement, especially in our industry, by understanding that information upfront, taking away some of the mundane things or some of the things that are wasting of time on an agent. I want an agent to sell. I want an agent to make sure that they're providing all that information to a customer, that customer feels secure about purchasing with us instead of checking off boxes and re-asking things. So I think that this is something that is definitely important, but it takes data. Make sure that you have clean data and make sure that your input is really good because it's very difficult to do all of these things if you're not focusing on the data aspect of it as well.

Patricia L. Harman (32:07):
It's still makes a huge difference in terms of where you're starting. Go ahead, Mary.

Mary Boyd (32:10):
Can I add one more thing? That's fine. Hold back. I think the other thing I'm really excited about is just sort of the complexion of our industry. When we're talking about these kinds of things, our industry is going to continue to change. It can be absolutely terrifying to someone or it could be really exciting. But when I think for the folks that are even just looking across this room, this is a very different looking room than we would've had five years ago or 10 years ago. And that's really exciting. I bet a lot of people here, how many people here did not start their career in insurance company? That's so cool. Right?

Ashley Phillips (32:51):
Yeah.

Mary Boyd (32:52):
Amazing. That just would not have happened. And so guys, awesome. Welcome. Thank you for coming. And what happens, we start working in insurance and if you really get in and love what you do, then we all get stuck here. I mean, we love it being, we're not stuck here at all because it's because it's like this puzzle that you don't ever really get to solve. It's really cool and you just keep doing it. And right now with all the new tools and the new things, when we really do apply these new tools, it means we have to change the way we've worked and serve people and work together with our partners very differently and move forward from where we're doing it. We can't just discard everything that we've been doing. We have to transform, but that's going to take all of us together and that's going to be real work, but real fun stuff to do. And so I think we'll need everyone that's here. So I'm really, really glad that's happening.

Patricia L. Harman (33:48):
Sometimes I feel like the insurance industry is like the best kept secret because people who are on the outside have this very different perspective in terms of what it looks like and what it's like to work in the industry. And when you come into it, you find out how interesting, how constantly changing and evolving and just what the impact is across so many different ways. So I want to know as far as how can executives set a course for the future for the companies, let me start all over again. As executives set a course for the future for their companies, what's one piece of advice you can share with them that could help them be more successful? And Ashley, I'll start with you on that one. I

Ashley Phillips (34:30):
Have a couple of things. Mary mentioned one earlier, investing in talent, really making sure that your company is focused on bringing the right person in to put in the right seat. It costs a lot of money to onboard an employee just to have someone walk out because we don't have the technology or we don't have the right experience, or we're not being innovative enough to excite young people to come in and start being in an organization. So I think investing in talent is a big piece of it. I think being diversified in that talent is also, I work for one of the most diversified companies I've ever worked for and it's such a joy. It's amazing to see from all different things, genders and cultures, age groups and things like that. I think it's really, really important to be open-minded, especially when you've been in the industry a long time.

(35:23):
We know a lot, but we don't know it all. So I think it's really important to bring people in and get that fresh perspective from different areas and be open to listen to these different things that they're telling us. It may be very different from what we've done and what we've been thinking, but it's really important to grow. Fostering a culture of innovation within that at all the different levels of an organization is really important. We have a team in our organization that's led by one of my colleagues that brings in young leaders to think about ideas and problem solve and gives them the opportunity to execute. And one last thing, outside of customer experience. Customer experience is always number one, that's always something you have to focus on. But data security and privacy, data privacy, this has been a huge thing. I know we touched on a little bit today, but we haven't deep dived. This is a big, big, big deal. The more data you collect, the more exposed you can be as a company. Please make sure that you're looking at securing that data and figuring out how you do that. And as you grow and expand your business into different states, really understanding privacy laws is very important. As you're interacting on the web and doing those things. It's really important to make sure that you're doing your checks and balances.

Patricia L. Harman (36:38):
Yep. That's great advice. Definitely. Lauren, what advice do you have?

Lauren Dieterich (36:42):
So drawing on my recent experience, I really would encourage all of you, as your setting visions for your enterprises and pushing them to move forward, do not underestimate the amount of change leadership that that is going to take in your organization at all levels, huge. Your leadership teams will be behind you and they will understand the vision. And then there are so many levels lower than that in the organization who need your help and support from all levels of management to understand what that vision is and start to develop that muscle around change, agility, and continuous improvement so that teams don't feel that the constant evolution that you're pushing for is a stress to their day-to-day.

Patricia L. Harman (37:27):
Great. Megan, that I'll get. Mary, do you guys have anything you want to add to that?

Megan Sharpe (37:31):
Sure. I'll just add quickly. I agree with the change is inevitable. So being I think customer centric, thinking first about the customer, what do the customers need? And really advocating for the customer in the organization and knowing that since everything is changing, the change management actually needs to be managed across the organization. Just as Lauren said, it's not just because we've been at some of these companies for a long time, doesn't mean what we do is what we should continue doing. We have to be open to new ideas, new processes, and our consumers are demanding it.

Mary Boyd (38:05):
You know how I feel about it. Any successful strategies, equal business game plan and people strategy, you have to do it.

Patricia L. Harman (38:13):
I agree. Well, that wraps up our session today. The ladies will be around the conference. We're not going to do a q and A here at the end, but if you have questions for them, I'm sure you catch up with them during our networking break. And we're going to take a break now for the next 30 minutes and then that's going to be followed by demos in the exhibit hall and I'll see you back here at 11.40. So thanks everybody.