Insurance is attractive to women, there is no doubt about that. In many Asian insurance markets, in fact, women dominate the sales and service areas. The bigger issue of making the industry more diverse gender-wise is how to make women see the opportunities in various areas of the business. While offering them a package of incentives may seem like an easy way to do this, it is not all that women want.
By Manuelita Contreras
What we have found in doing this feature for the past three years now is that insurance is surely attractive to women as an industry because it plays to their strengths. Insurance is about people and sales – and women are known to be good in relating to people and make good salespersons.
Looking at some numbers in the Thai and Philippine markets would tell us the industry’s attractiveness to women. Many insurance companies in the Philippines, for one, are dominated by women with their large presence in sales and service areas, while Thailand boasts of a significant number of women in areas like marketing and operations.
But as these markets would also show, the typical reality of women’s presence in Asia’s insurance industry is that many of them are concentrated in areas like sales, marketing, finance, actuary and services. The challenge then is not just drawing more women into the industry – but more so about having more of them in various areas of the business.
Give them equal opportunity, not incentives
While it may be tempting to offer incentives to attract more women into the industry and its various areas, Ms Sohn Byoung-ok, CEO of Prudential Life Insurance Co of Korea, believes that women will grow and excel when they are given fair and equal opportunity.
“I believe equal opportunity is one of the most sacred principles when it comes to women at workplace,” she said, adding that it is the management’s responsibility to make sure opportunities are available to every employee. She noted that “it is this culture of revering individual’s commitment to success, regardless of their gender, that attracts quality female workforce to a particular field or organisation”.
Flexibility is key
She admitted though that there are some barriers hindering women from seeking opportunities in the industry – one of them is childcare. “Since women continue to be the primary agent of childcare compared to men, providing various means of support for the female workforce with their childcare concerns can make the insurance industry more appealing to women,” she said.
Concurring, Ms Rizalina Mantaring, President & CEO of Sun Life of Canada (Philippines), said that while professionals, male or female, are generally attracted to the same things – career advancement, job satisfaction, good culture and working relationships, stereotypes still exist, such as women being primarily responsible for childcare. Hence female-related or female-specific benefits could be attractive to women.
Companies, for example, can offer them time-off for kids’ activities or medical care, more child-friendly workplaces such as by having a day care centre for emergency situations when they need to bring their kids to work, as well as extended maternity leave. Flexible working hours and the ability to work from home will also be attractive, added Ms Mantaring.
Similarly, Ms Annette King, President & CEO of Manulife Singapore, said that companies can consider exploring flexible working arrangements for talented women and retaining them in order to attract more of them to the industry.
Address basic issues
In tackling the challenge, Ms Jayne Plunkett, Managing Director, Head of Casualty Underwriting Asia at Swiss Re, said the industry needs to address some of the fundamental factors that lead to an absence of women in the workplace, such as lack of role models and access to informal networks and persistence of stereotypes.
She noted that while these factors vary from market to market and from company to company, many things can be done to attract more women to the industry. “First, we need to foster an inclusive environment that openly and warmly welcomes women,” she said, stressing the importance of getting leaders, especially CEOs, to openly commit to and support gender diversity and hold their managers accountable to it.
“We also know that having more women at the top has a cascading effect that we will naturally see more of them throughout all levels in a company – therefore addressing women in leadership positions is key,” she said.
Elaborating, Ms Plunkett said the industry should address unconscious biases and stereotyping, challenge expectations of what leaders look like and behave, and transform traditional working models and career paths by bringing more flexibility and agility to both.
“It is also useful to create networks that bring women (and others) together to address issues and provide support and sparring partners,” she said.
Make your career development strategy known
To attract more women into the various areas of the business, a company should make it known that it provides career development based on merit for all – women and men at all levels, in all departments, said Ms King.
Citing her company’s practice, she said Manulife recognises that every individual deserves relevant, comprehensive and effective training and development opportunities. “We offer various career development strategies such as ‘job rotation’, ‘special assignment’ and ‘mentoring’, which broadens a staff’s knowledge of client and partner needs, and of other functions and departments in the organisation.”
She added that a woman employee can benefit from this by gaining more experience in and exposure to various departments. “Our career development strategies enable women to build skill sets and create their own long-term career paths. This will interest enthusiastic, career-driven women to join the industry,” said Ms King.
Saying that there is already a lot of diversity in her market gender-wise, Ms Mantaring suggested that other markets publicly showcase the success of women in various fields of insurance – to dispel the notion that women can only succeed in the industry if they are in sales or are actuaries.
It’s the challenge of the job
For Ms Patchara Taveechaiwattana, Chief Officer of Market Management at Ayudhya Allianz CP Life Thailand, it is the challenge of the job and the chance to learn from one’s area of responsibility that will attract capable people into the industry regardless of their gender.
“Incentive is part of the package, but it’s not the only thing that makes one moves from one place to another,” she said.
Tapping women’s strengths
While believing that success in insurance comes from intellect, talent, competence, strong work ethic and the ability to work well with others – which both men and women have in equal doses – Ms Mantaring observed that women are often more patient and better listeners. “So they make excellent customer care professionals,” she said, adding though that she does not intend to generalise.
Likewise Ms Sohn noted that women are generally better in relating to others “in a sensitive and ethical manner”, and that they can maximise such strengths by pursuing careers in insurance underwriting, compliance and customer service.
“The business of insurance is different from other financial businesses in that it must embody warmth and trust,” she said. “Insurance products are designed to protect people against risks such as death and illnesses, and women who are delicate and affectionate do have an edge when it comes to communicating such emotional values to customers.”
Women are also often better at multitasking and are more detail-oriented – and thus make good project managers and quality control specialists, said Ms Mantaring. Women’s intuition, she noted, often makes them valuable partners during negotiations, and that their ability to sense potential issues or dangers makes them good risk managers. “But again, I would emphasise that men could be just as good at this. It really depends on the individual.”
It risks stereotyping women
Ms Plunkett, on the other hand, said that while having diverse teams leads to greater innovation as it enables an organisation to approach problems from different perspectives and creates fresh opportunities for clients, positing that women show certain characteristics that men do not, and vice versa, risks stereotyping women.
“The important thing is that women can find their own authentic way of being themselves in the workplace, and not have to try and emulate the male model in order to be successful.” This, she said, is where positive role models, encouragement of different leadership styles and an inclusive culture come into play.
Judge them by their deeds
Outside insurance, it is good to learn from the larger discourse on women’s presence – more so the dearth of it – in companies’ boardrooms. The issue became a raging debate in Europe last year, where women were reported to occupy only 12% of board positions, when some EU and political leaders threatened to set quotas if companies would not comply voluntarily.
This renewed interest in the issue came about in the wake of the financial crisis, when some advocates of gender equality argued that having more women in boardrooms could have avoided the excessive risk-taking that helped cause the financial crisis. This argument was exemplified by Ms Christine Lagarde of IMF when she said: “If Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters, today’s economic crisis clearly would look quite different.”
The chorus was that a diverse management team makes for a more effective leadership team.
Various researches have come out the past few years, suggesting that having more women in boardrooms does not just create greater diversity, but also makes economic sense. McKinsey’s Women Matter 2010 report, for example, found that companies with the highest share of women in executive committees outperformed those with no women, and that firms that were more gender-diverse had 56% higher operating results.
Many women executives though, are not open to the idea of setting quotas just to have more of them in senior management or boardrooms. Many would still prefer to be recognised based on their competence – not on their gender.
While noting that many company boards need to better reflect the world’s diversity and tap into different viewpoints and experiences, Ms Lagarde, writing as France’s Minister for the Economy, Industry and Employment in The International Herald Tribune, said there is really no need for strict rules on gender equality. “Let us, rather, judge women as we do men – on the basis of their deeds. The point is certainly not to erase the differences between women and men but to enhance the talents of each individual.”
Thais fly high
While the percentage of women holding senior management positions globally went down to 20% last year from 24% in 2009 – and up just 1% from the 2004 level – Thai women have soared to the top with the greatest number of women in senior management across the world.
Thailand had 45% of its women holding senior management positions, revealed the 2011 Grant Thornton International Business Report (IBR), followed by Georgia (40%), Russia (36%), Hong Kong and the Philippines (both 35%) and Mainland China (34%).
As Thailand continues to make headway in the percentage of women in senior management, the Philippines, the only Asian nation (8th place) in the top 10 countries with the least gender gap in the World Economic Forum’s 2011 Global Gender Gap rankings, seems to be losing steam.
Grant Thornton’s 2007 survey saw the country flying high with 50%, followed by Brazil (42%), Thailand (39%), Hong Kong (35%), Russia (34%) and Mainland China (32%). It held the top position once again in the 2009 survey, but at a lower score of 47%, followed by Russia (42%) and Thailand (38%). Last year’s ranking represented its steepest fall so far – plunging from 50% in 2007 to 35% in 2011.
One explanation given for Thailand’s progress on this front is that the country’s working culture offers equal opportunities for men and women to achieve senior management positions. Businesses bent on diversifying their leadership often ensure women are given equal opportunities for stretch assignments, said an official at Grant Thornton Thailand in a report.
In insurance, too
Both these countries’ strong performance of their female workforce reverberates in their insurance industries – not just in senior management levels but also down the line.
There are, in fact, more women than men working in insurance in the Philippines, according to the assessment of Ms Rizalina Mantaring, President & CEO of Sun Life of Canada (Philippines). “Ninety percent of most sales forces are women, and in the service areas, 80%-85% are female, except for IT where there is more of an even split. That is certainly true in Sun Life,” she said.
Going up to the executive and managerial levels, the distribution is more equal, with women comprising half the population, “although I’m aware that in other companies, there tend to be more male executives,” she noted.
Likewise in Thailand, Ms Patchara Taveechaiwattanam, Chief Officer of Market Management at Ayudhya Allianz CP Life, noted that many women work in the industry in such areas as marketing, human resources and operations.
Still ahead
Looking at some figures, the Philippines remains ahead of Thailand though in terms of the number of women in senior management positions in insurance, based on Asia Insurance Review’s 2011 data. The Philippines had 15 insurance chiefs – three president & CEOs and 12 presidents – up from 14 in 2009. Thailand, on the other hand, had one president, eight managing directors (up from seven in 2009), and one deputy CEO.
