NEW YORK—The last time she addressed the IICF Women in Insurance Global Conference, Lloyd’s Inga Beale said that she wanted the boss’s job. Shortly afterward, she was asked to become CEO of the storied insurance market.
“After 325 years of history in this industry, this is not going to happen,” Beale said Thursday of her disbelief about being appointed first female chief executive at Lloyd’s of London in late 2013.
Women at the earlier IICF conference had talked about how “a lot of them don’t actually want the top job. I got upset by this,” she recalled. The lesson her appointment taught her is that women should ask for what they want.
“You have to, because people can’t read your mind,” she said. She recounted a time when as CEO of Continental Europe P&C for GE in Paris she wondered why she wasn’t being offered the top European post in Munich. So she picked up the phone and asked for it.
“I nearly didn’t get one of the biggest career breaks of my life because they thought I wanted to live in Paris,” Beale said of the promotion she then received.
The other four lessons Beale shared about operating in the predominantly male insurance environment were:
1. Be authentic. “I behaved like a man in the ‘80s, as the only female underwriter among 35 men,” Beale said. “I would outdrink the other guys. I felt I needed to or I wouldn’t be included. I experienced some sexism and almost left insurance,” traveling to Sydney where she was inspired by the leadership of a woman at the BBC there. She then returned to the industry determined to be herself. “I started to get promotion in my career,” she said.
2. Take risks. Never focused on planning her career, Beale said, she nevertheless had the courage to take advantage of opportunities that presented themselves. “I took a promotion in Kansas City, very scary,” she said of a job she held at GE Insurance Solutions. “I moved from a front office role to auditing underwriters, a back office role. I set up a new function and hired new people. I got noticed by leadership.”
3. Be a role model. “In my late 30s, I became a workaholic,” Beale said, but decided that as a leader she wanted to promote work-life balance. She also wanted to promote diversity at Lloyd’s, with the result that people there began blogging about different issues, including disabilities and sexuality. “One guy who had worked at Lloyd’s for 30 years felt he could begin talking about his gay son,” she said. “We must role model what we believe in.”
4. Believe in your own ability. Beale said she once turned down a job offer from GE, even though the leadership there told her they believed she could do it. “I took an assertiveness course for women and said, ‘right, I’ll take that job,’” she recounted. She learned that women can be very strong when other people are panicking after leading Converium, a company in need of a turnaround. And she added, “confidence is what I need to modernize Lloyd’s” amid disruptive forces facing the industry, such as protectionism and technology.
