Dan Cicchetti, Senior Director, Client Engagement, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Insurance – UK and Ireland
Q. Tell us about your role at your firm. What do you do, and what do you find most interesting about it?
A. I am responsible for leading our client engagement team, so that’s essentially looking after the sales of our solutions into the insurance market and ensuring they are delivered to our clients’ expectations. In a nutshell, my role is to ensure we’re delivering excellent value and exceptional customer service to our customers. I am extremely fortunate to work with a group of amazing people in our business and in our customers’ own businesses. One of the things I love most about this industry is that relationships matter and our people invest significantly in building those relationships.
Q. What are the challenges facing your business right now, and how are you working to overcome them?
A. As a data, analytics and technology provider to the insurance market, the sky is the limit for us with regards to the business areas we can support, so one of our challenges is ‘focus’. Right now, we are thinking about where we focus our services, and how and when we expand into other areas that give maximum benefit to our clients. To date, we have been almost wholly focused on supporting insurance providers in their pricing and underwriting decisions for home, motor and commercial, but now we’re supporting wider insurance decisions such as at point of claim, and looking at the value we could add in adjacent markets like Pet and Travel.
Q. If you could go back to the start of your professional career, what piece of advice would you give to yourself?
A. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes! But when you do, learn from those mistakes and own them.
Q. What would be your prediction for the industry in 2022 and beyond?
A. The future is incredibly promising! Consumer choice will drive the opportunity for disruption, and that’s really exciting for those insurance providers who are prepared to embrace data and technology to shift consumer perceptions about insurance. Certainly, consumer expectations in claims continues to change. Hyper-personalisation of the claims journey is becoming a core focus for insurance providers. They recognise the importance of responding to an individual’s specific needs, from how they are communicated with to the way in which claims are paid out and generally managed.
Q. What made you want to work in this industry?
A. Like so many, I simply fell into insurance. I finished university and needed a job to pay the bills whilst I worked out what I wanted to do. As it turned out, I loved what I ended up doing and never left. To me, insurance is an exciting and dynamic place to work, and I am passionate about attracting a diverse range of talent to our sector and promoting the opportunities it has to offer.
Q. Thus far, what has been your most significant or proudest achievement in your current or previous roles?
A. In 2011, when I joined LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the goal was to launch a number of unique contributory databases that would bring huge value to insurers. Whilst other contributory solutions existed, no one had done anything for a long time, or at least at the scale we had planned. Our initial goal was to launch a No Claims Discount database. This meant gaining buy-in from insurers and brokers across the market. It took time but we all had a common goal to bring a paper-based system into the 21st century and make it digitised. The database now has contributions from over 96% of the motor insurance market. We have removed the administrative burden of paper proof of NCD from consumers and insurance providers, reduced fraud and offered vast insights that were previously unavailable. That’s something I am personally really proud of, but I’m also proud of the market for embracing data sharing and truly leveraging it for the good of the customer.
Q. How would you like to see the insurance industry improved next year / 5 years / by the time you retire?
A. I love the insurance industry (did I say that already!?). You’re surrounded by such brilliant people, and so often those people are looking to pull in the same direction for positive change. Given that, I’d love to see positive change related to diversity and inclusion. Attracting a broader range of people from different backgrounds can only be of huge value to the industry in general.
