Transcription:
Nate Golia: (
All right. Welcome back in everyone. I hope we get some, more people coming back in, from the exhibit hall over the next, few minutes here. But we are gonna get started, with Bill Pappas, EVP & head of Global Technology and Operations for MetLife bill. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank
Bill Pappas: (
You. I'm excited to be here.
Nate Golia: (
I'm excited to have you, we had a conversation a couple months ago, maybe about two months ago at this point and, it went so well. I was like, let's just run that back for everyone at, dig in because I couldn't possibly do it justice, with the transcript. So, thank you for joining us. Bill, you came to, the insurance industry from banking. Can you talk a little bit about comparing and contrasting the technology environment and digital transformation in those industries? Yeah.
Bill Pappas: (
Yeah. First of all, like I said, I appreciate for, having me here. We went through it virtually and was a lot of, connection through this and we learned a lot from both of us. So I appreciate the time today, but, let's talk about, this is the question that you asked me, almost a couple of months ago, very insurance and why did I choose the insurance at this point. For me was, I chose the company to be honest with you. So there's three things that, really resonate to me. One is from a company perspective, the strategy and the purpose, number two, the ability to be able to service the customer the way they want to be service and number three, the scope of the role we talk a lot is a combination of technology and operations gives you the opportunity to do that.
Bill Pappas: (
So let's start with strategy that I got a call from, our CEO, Michelle Kala, and one of the things that he talked about it is the strategy. He said, the strategy is very simple, but it's very powerful. He talked about customer at the center of everything that we do. Customer is a north star going forward and it sounds very simple, but it's very powerful because for me gave me an opportunity to really start having the discussion. How can a combine technology and operational organization really bring that to life? The discussion that we have is we start that was pre pandemic, by the way, a couple of months before pre pandemic, the discussions around what are those customer preferences and the whole idea that the customers do not care about industry kind of boundaries. Nobody talks about. I want a different experience when I deal with my insurance companies versus the banking one.
Bill Pappas: (
So it was that idea to be able to really service the customer the way they want to be serviced the way they had the best, last experience, regardless if you happen to be in insurance. And the third thing is we talked about a combined technology and operation. So think about my organization. We have teams that implement the products that our customers are buying. We have teams, which is customer service that are able to bring and really service the customer and we have teams that are gonna be able to really, we process all of claims and underneath that it's our technology brings those capabilities to life, but also creating new capabilities to ensure that it fits for purpose in terms of what we have done. So the strategy with our purpose, which is always there for our customers, our ability to just break free from the insurance kind of lenses, from a customer perspective and the scope to be able to do that was very appealing to me.
Nate Golia: (
Right. I think, what I appreciate is that you touch on these sort of three major overarching themes that of course inform all your digital technology strategy. the first is customer experience. We're gonna hear a lot about customer experience throughout dig in from everyone. The second is workforce, which is, you know, a part of having a team that's understanding the mission. But the third, which one we have to talk about right now is the pandemic. So you started, I think it was just a couple months before the pandemic starts. So now you've come in, you've had ideas, you've gone through the interview process. You've sold this idea. Now everything's changed.
Bill Pappas: (
Oh, that is absolutely and I see faces here, some of the people that work with me, with MetLife, but we, I started two months before the pandemic. So obviously I knew almost nothing as I came in and trying to really put my arms around MetLife per se. But personally, I think it was the faster onboarding that I've ever had in my life. So insurance, I always talked about it now almost three years into this, it's a people to people business. So I was onboarded virtually across 40 different countries, not only within Medlife, but also some of our strategic partners that we are work very closely together to bring the capabilities to life. Like there is no end. And the second thing we had to pivot it, and when we looked at the pandemic for us, we understood early enough, there was two priorities that we needed to really ensure that our collective team, not only technology and operations, but also MetLife need to do number one uninterrupted experience for the customers we needed to service the customers.
Bill Pappas: (
We could not be the ones that were not able to provide those capabilities because our purpose is to be, to always be with you when matters the most for them. So we knew that we needed to be even more customer centric that we wanted to be. The second thing people forget about it as we went through the pandemic, also the cyber environment changed very rapidly. So we talked about, as we are servicing the customer the way they want to be service and that's changing, we also needed to protect customer and company assets through our cyber resilient program. So what we did on the customer side, we start paying very close attention to what the customer, telling us and how the evolution of those, customer needs. And we knew that they needed to, continue the interaction with us and they needed to make sure that it's more digital.
Bill Pappas: (
So our digital agenda really kind of, took a priority, even more accelerated from what we thought we were gonna do. We also, understood that there was a lot of feedback around our customers ability to ensure that they're able to manage the financial landscape of what they had. So it was a lot of feedback in how do you help me manage financially what I have right now. And also from an associate perspective, they needed tools to be able to interact. So, on the customer side, we really, couple of examples of how we brought those to life on the financial services perspective, or they need to make sure that they're able to manage the financials. We develop a new digital, solutions and application that we develop in house. We call it app wise. It was up and running last year through internally through agile, and really focuses on how do you create those financial habits and help our customers really navigate through this.
Bill Pappas: (
So it's emotional first dollar, second making sure that they understand how the financial habits that they need to develop and reinforce through that. So that, it was a really, a big kind of application that is up and running for us in the US. We also look at outside of the US think about the pandemic started, in Asia, so that we had, what we call, health 360 was another application that we developed that we provide access to 40 different health services and through somebody's mobile. So think about if you're sitting in Asia, as it started, they were able to look at the insurance products, plus the financial services and being able to figure out how they want to be serviced. So customer and digital solution was there. And then we needed to look at agents especially outside of the us, what type of tools do we give them?
Bill Pappas: (
How do we automate our service capability? So, our customers will be able to do and provide claims and interact with us as we need it to be. So that was huge and then we spent a lot of time making sure that we absolutely have the security from these. So everything that we develop through our digital needed to be flexible, but also secure enough for that information. So that was kind of the onboarding and how everything pivoted through those very deliberate customer preferences that they kept changing as we went through the pandemic,
Nate Golia: (
Right. It just sort, everyone knows. I got the questions on my phone. I wasn't checking my messages. Before we get to the next question, I wanted to make sure that it was sort of tied it to the previous say, cause you talked about up wise, especially we talked about that the first time is this focus on emotional health, informing financial health. And you're also, but of course the pandemic is driving people. Digital, they've got digital, you're doing digital onboarding, you're doing digital meetings and coordinating things remotely with the staff, that's developing this sort of emotional touch. I think that one of the things that we're navigating throughout digital transformation and insurance is you said it's person to person, business people talk to people about these, these, sort of factors that are non-financial that impact their financial health. Right. How are you, or how is MetLife thinking about preserving the ability to do a human touch while there's there's more mediation through digital channels?
Bill Pappas: (
That is a great question. I can tell you that, as we spend a lot of time, just even now, obviously we continue through our data analytics going back to the, customer preferences and also our associate preferences. As we went into the pandemic, the acceleration of the digital was so high and nobody wanted to hear anything more. So we felt that the solution, it was digital only. So it was very hard, but that we had to go back and look at the data and what our customers are telling us. They want the balance of both. So for us, we activated our strategy, which we call it high tech, high touch. So our ability to be able to digitize a lot of the transactional nature of our customer interaction, because quite frankly, they didn't, they couldn't go anywhere, but they wanted any single time to figure out what is the status of the claim.
Bill Pappas: (
They don't want to talk to somebody, if they can go into a secure and flexible digital solution to figure that out, that solves the issue. But what they also told us, I want you to be here for when it matters most for me and this is where either through our agents, outside of the us, or through our customer advisor, how do you preserve that human touch for when it matters the most to them, their ability to be able to understand the products in a lot more details, their ability to understand the service that we're able to provide our ability to educate. So for us, we pivoted to say yes, on the digital and we need to be able to develop faster, cheaper and in a way that is secure and flexible, but we didn't pull away from the human aspect of that relationship. So we believe the balance of both the high tech and the high touch is what's keeping us differentiating ourselves. And it goes back to our promise. We always gonna be here for you when it matters the most and that what it really helps.
Nate Golia: (
I'm gonna go off script just a little bit because I'd wanna touch back on a couple things you mentioned coz throughout your description of, what you wanted to be your vision for MetLife as it came into the organization. Of course, right before the pandemic, there's always that focus on, data security and cyber security. I think just since we've talked, the cyber security environment has gotten even more from, I'm just wondering how you're, you know, what you're looking towards in terms of like the ability to continue to innovate and deliver while understanding that attacks are increasing and vulnerabilities are increasing.
Bill Pappas: (
No, I mean, and again, it's not only this has changed. I keep reminding a lot of our customers and our business partners that it was not only the pandemic, it was the pandemic and it was the evolution of cyber, the way that we looked and talked about cyber two years ago, or even two and a half years ago, it is so different. And for us, we, we did it at the same time. One is customer number one is protect the company. So we start pivoting it, not only looking at the cyber the traditional way, but how do you look at cyber resilience? And what cyber resilience really meant is we need to make sure that we have contemporary processes and products in place to monitoring what's happening across our environment. And we definitely invested heavily to have the latest that is available, but also that we became very humble to say that it's not, that it's not gonna happen to us.
Bill Pappas: (
It will happen to us then how do you recover? So we spend significant amount of time, not only monitoring and defending our parameters, but also getting better and better to figure out if that happens, not if, when it happens, how do you recover that? So think about the size in the scale, we are in four different countries, four different regions. And we have a lot of different customers and we are B2B, but also we are B2B to C. So how do you develop that? So we doubled down and that's what I said through the pandemic for us protect the company and protect the customer assets. It was a very concrete priority, similar to, I need to service the customer, but it was the pivot from kind talk about cyber as to a cyber resilience and incorporating the recovery aspect. I mean, I'll tell you, yesterday we did another simulation with the, all of the CO's direct report that we call it ELT the executive leadership team. So we keep doing simulation in terms, okay, this is what happened. You have a bridge X number of PII, information's are out, walk me through end to end. What are you gonna do to be able to do that? Not only how you figured it out and how do you capture, how do you recover so it gives a very different meaning to what a resilient and business continuity means, especially as we're coming out of the pandemic.
Nate Golia: (
Yeah. I mean, just, I don't just to sort of close out this point only because I've been reading so much, recently in the sort of general, technology, realm about just increasing cyber attacks and all these things and like what struck me as well, when we talk about is like, well, MetLife is going to get attacked. You know, coz it's such a big target.
Bill Pappas: (
I mean, this is the other thing that we need, we are getting, I mean, everybody that is sitting here every single day, we are, the difference is the magnitude and your ability to monitoring slow it down before it has an implication. And if it does, how do you ring fence it fast enough to ensure that this does not spread across, but the whole notion that people are waiting for it, it's not real anymore. It's happening every single day, every single company and the other thing is it's we are in the business of trust. So if your customer is not trusting you, that you're able to keep their information safe, it's an issue.
Nate Golia: (
Yeah. I'm sorry, what I meant to imply was that like a big, company's a big target, not that you were in experiencing any sort out of the ordinary. It was what I meant like, because every people say we didn't, you know, like I said, like for some small, we're small companies, it's happened to us. It's an interesting perspective where usually sometimes people who at the bigger companies, you know, there might be an idea that they would've under, they wouldn't see this as you know, but the bigger companies are seeing this issue maybe more acutely than even smaller, smaller companies, which include, you know, people like insurance agents and partners. .
Bill Pappas: (
Absolutely, which is again, and the more digital, the more you need to figure out, how do you provide that digital experience security. So think about what we used to be, even as an insurance. Now, the more that we pushing those digital interactions, it gives a very new meanings in terms of how do you protect and how do you protect those assets?
Nate Golia: (
We just posted some reporting on how that's being, how that's trickling down to the customer level, the customer becoming an individualized target and how that impacts the insurance companies who work with that customer up the value chain. But anyway, I just wanted to say, just because, you know, you had mentioned it a couple more times and I know that it's, it's getting, getting pretty, pretty, wild out there. I believe our next question though is on staffing.
Bill Pappas: (
I Like that.
Nate Golia: (
That's exactly. It is wild though. Yeah. I think that, the only thing we talked a lot about, that I really wanna touch on is a big theme here is, you wanna call it the great resignation. You wanna call it workforce tightness. I think how do you, sort of try and continue to build a team, keeping in mind that people have certain desires that they're looking for something that's gonna be elevated from their previous experience. And you're trying to become that employer choice, but also retaining as many people as you can, right?
Bill Pappas: (
No, I mean, obviously I don't think anybody, I mean, everybody in this room will agree that there is nobody new from this. But again, this is the other thing that we're seeing and this environment involving. So what are the companies need? It's involving the kind of like the prototype, what do we need from our candidates is very different. So we need obviously functional expertise and that's hard to just get right folks that are gonna be able to code the data. The cybersecurity that we just talked about it people they know how to process at scale. That's what I call functional expertise, but a company needs that and then we say, we also need some domain expertise. You don't have to be data expert per se, or insurance, but we need at least financial services. The third thing that is really coming in into the equation, which was not as much before we also need people that they understand how we make money.
Bill Pappas: (
We need folks that they understand and how do we be commercial. So not only do data for the take of data and do code for the sake of code, but why we're doing that. So I think one, what we as companies really looking for, it's evolving from a functional expertise to a domain expertise, but also people that they know how to run business and be embedded in the business. So we are up kind of like of our requirements, second, our candidates and all our associates. Also, they have some very specific needs and they've been very vocal for all the right reasons. They're saying I wanted, if I joined your company for MetLife, I want to understand what my career journey will be. So me, if I'm gonna join a data organization, what will my career looks like three to four years down the road?
Bill Pappas: (
What type of skill sets do I need to have to stay contemporary? Because there is a huge need for people to ensure that not only they feel value in contemporary within our company, but how do they feel value and able to, to manage outside of the industry as well? The second thing is now that you understand the journeys and the skillset, what is your training and making sure that you keep that contemporary workforce updated with the training and also what is the skills and the literacy, skills that you need to manage. I always say that, it's been humbling for the last three years to see how our leadership tie style evolving to manage what it is today. It's so different. Even what it was six months ago. I joke when we say authenticity is what everybody talks about. It, it's hard to be authentic.
Bill Pappas: (
I didn't know how to be authentic because I've never taught how to be authentic. I told, as you grow up, you cannot go to the office, you cannot do this, and then you gonna stay home and you cannot do this. And those two are very separate pieces. Look at the last three years, there is all of this is blending. So not only we need to give our associates the skill sets, the are ability to figure out how they can progress through the careers and the training, but we need to retrain. Some cases really taught from the beginning on what does it take to be an effective leader today and not leader only at that level leader, like a manager level leader. And that is very, very different from what we have done before. So for us, we always said, number one priority is our people.
Bill Pappas: (
So how do we recruit them and make sure they're very clear in terms of what we are looking at. We are looking for technologists that they understand, and they're excited on activating a purpose and our customer strategy. And in addition, building the functional expertise that they need to have, and we're looking for people that are the end of the day, that they, we are able to shape them in the way that makes sense now. And the last piece that is so, so important, everybody may say they cannot do. That's the culture. So for us, everybody's coming in and they want to be a part of organization that is bigger than what they need to do every single day. So culture from the ability to make sure they're able to achieve the career aspiration, it provides the diversity and the inclusion. We talked about sustainability, doing good broadly across the communities that we've been part of this.
Bill Pappas: (
So the culture is a huge piece. So how do you cultivate that? In addition of you're providing clarity on how you can keep them as contemporary as it makes sense from a skill set perspective and also from a leadership perspective. So we're not immune, but we are thoughtful through this and we are truly making this. We are here to be in the business of human resources. We are here to be able to attract, to retain and to develop, and if that's not our priority and it just, we're never gonna be able to succeed. It's easy to find people that have functional expertise. It's very hard to find people that can be leaders and manage at scale.
Nate Golia: (
Right. I think that, when we talk in the insurance industry about transformation and where it comes from and how it happens, and I think Linda touched on this in her opening keynote a little bit, it takes a different kind of, like perception about how, who the up and down flow of ideas goes through the workforce. And I think that, you know, in insurance, if you wanna have people who are in innovation labs and sandboxes who are developing new solutions and trying new things, you know, they're gonna say like, if I do this, is that a thing that I'm gonna be able to elevate up to the higher levels in a way that's effective? And I think that, as you're talking, as we're talking about staffing and talent and insurance and digital transformation that, like you said, cultivating that sense of authenticity that you will take these ideas and take them seriously is important. We have a little bit more time here. I wanted to get your, just I sort of reaction to the idea of the ensure tech movement. I've been banking out through FinTech. Just wanna get your perspective on how you view Insure Tech as a sort of a thing that's happening. Like do you, is it something that is built, defined by startups defined by just a transformation engine? Like how do you see it?
Bill Pappas: (
Yeah, I mean, just to touch on that innovation thing, because it's you said something that is very clear and it's very close to my heart. I just don't believe innovation happens in the lab. I mean, quite frankly, I've been very notorious as I came in. I just had all our innovation labs because quite frankly, people are just staying disconnected from what the customer is. So for us, we believe innovation is through that very focused strategy that we have in place and make sure that we don't innovate. If we don't see that it's gonna be for the benefit of the customers, where that simplification is gonna benefit the customer. So we look at innovation is everybody's business versus a lab lab has not really pan out, in a very, and I have not seen a lot of successful stories coming from that now on the thing that we talked about, in Insure Tech, it's huge.
Bill Pappas: (
So one of the things that we're trying to do, I don't want us to be chasing the next signing object. So one of the ground rules that we have in Medlife for us, again, go back to the customer, what does the customer need? And do we understand it enough to figure out what can we and what is it gonna take for us to be able to provide that. So on the insurance, we're not going out just trying to figure out what is the next, signing object, but we pay very close attention to what's happening out there. So we have a very good understanding in terms of what does the insurance tech landscape looks like from all of those firms. We do three things. One, if we feel that the technology can add value to our customer proposition, we buy it.
Bill Pappas: (
We make sure that we incorporate it because we believe that we can, that it will help us to do better, faster, and cheaper solution for our customer. The second thing that we do when we feel there is a neutral, understanding in economics, we partner with them and we do that in a way that we also help them to scale to, for what we need to deliver. And the third thing that we're not naïve. We look at some of those companies that are out there obviously to get a market sale. So we compete. So part of what we needed to do as a company that has been out there for 153 years is make sure our companies agile enough, very close to what the customer said to be able to compete with those new, smaller, more agile companies. So we pay attention, we buy, we partner, but we also compete to make sure that we get us where we need to be.
Nate Golia: (
Great. They gave us three extra minutes, so it says four minutes. We're gonna go with just some final thoughts, then we can, wrap it up. If you have anything you wanted to add?
Bill Pappas: (
I mean, one of the things we just talked about, a hundred fifty three, one of the things company, one of the questions I keep I get asked, how does it feel to be part of a company that really it's been around for 153 years? A lot of people ask that question because they feel that it's a drug. I actually think it's an opportunity for us. Somebody asked me the other day and I said four things that is always, I always said about the power of being around for so long. Number one, our brand, it's very well known in the trust of the customers. Again, it takes a lot to be able to have a trust for 154 years. Number two, we had been able to prove that we reinvent ourselves to ensure that our company fits for purpose and even the last three years, as an example on the reinvention that we needed to do, the third thing is, we've been battle tested.
Bill Pappas: (
We never let a crisis go unnoticed and we're learning from it and we bring them back and you create resilience within the company. The last piece I said about a company that has been around for 153 years, it's we are part of the community mattered to us. We're part of the fabric. So we are cultivating the trust based on not only what we do to activate our everyday purpose, but also because we wanted to be a different corporate citizen across, across the communities as well. So that's what I will say about my extra. Yeah.
Nate Golia: (
Great Bill. Thank you so much for joining us, dig in and thank you for being a good friend. Thank you.
Bill Pappas: (
So, absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you.