Kathryn Considine National Manager Placements Community Broker Network - Melbourne
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athryn Considine was in university when she had her first brush with working in the insurance industry. At the age of 19 she wanted to earn extra money so she could travel. She even had a list of places she wanted to go. Having “office experience” in her resume was another motivation. Coincidentally her father Tim, who runs Austbrokers Countrywide, was looking to hire a part-timer for his professional indemnity team. So he offered her the job, which she happily accepted, doing 2½ days of work a week while completing a full-time degree at the University of Melbourne. She learned a lot, taking up a variety of functional roles including assisting account managers to place insurance programs, business development with associations and providing inputs to marketing and social media projects. At the same time, she became a member of Young Insurance Professionals (YIPs), serving on the committee handling the public relations aspects. Networking with other aspirational Gen Ys was something she enjoyed and found motivating. After graduating in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in political science and history, she wasn’t going to look around for an industry to work in. She enjoyed insurance and she knew that this was where she wanted to make her mark. “As I was doing processing and assisting, I just grew to love it and talking with clients,” she says. “I quite like numbers, so it was a really exciting new opportunity for me and I haven’t looked back since. The flame for insurance has not gone out. It never will.” The industry has reciprocated in kind. Ms Considine says her decision to pursue a career in insurance put her on a path she has found to be rewarding in terms of career and personal satisfaction. As a business development officer with CGU, she took a sabbatical and spent a year in London working for a Lloyd’s broker. The experience of living and working in London enabled her to tick off one of the top items on her travel list. After London she returned to join the CGU National Partner Solutions Team as technical delivery specialist before going on to the Community
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Broker Network, where she started as regional manager Victoria/Tasmania before being promoted to network development manager and then National Manager Placements, her current position. “The opportunities have been abundant,” Ms Considine says. “It’s been very rewarding. “I’ve certainly taken on a number of different roles in my career to date that have all been within the industry. I think it’s a real credit to our industry that we have so many diverse roles you can take on.” Now, at the age of 29, Ms Considine is a member of the Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance’s (ANZIIF) Generation i Council, a group dedicated to addressing the needs of the next generation of industry leaders. And she is completing a Diploma of Insurance Broking through ANZIIF to go with her Tier 1 Insurance Compliance Certificate. Ms Considine feels the industry still struggles to attract the brightest young people. “I think we have struggled to adequately address the issues around attracting young people to our industry, and more so determining the key skills we need to engage to cater to the future of insurance – things like creative brains and AI specialists, for example.” Technology and the emergence of new challengers are other areas where the industry will need to be more nimble and adaptable in responding to them, she says. “It’s so hard to predict what’s going to happen. We could see new entrants into the industry that we never expected, and I think we will continually evolve the way we do things to compete with those peripheral industries. It all comes down to understanding our customers better.” Ms Considine believes her generation has much to offer to the industry as it works to stay engaged and relevant in the digital economy. “We communicate electronically more through emails, texting, Instagram… we are kind of multi-channel communicators. “With our digitally savvy mindsets and experiences, we can offer new ways of doing things and I’ve certainly experienced that throughout my time – through automating 0 processes to marketing online.”