Politics and Economics

Two years ago, Salmaan Saeed, a broking and markets apprentice at WTW, chose to carve his own professional path by choosing an apprenticeship over a university degree like everyone else in the family. Instead of university debt, he now spends his days talking to companies about the risk they face from governments behaving badly – a career he describes as “super awesome.”

A conversation during a summer job with Mercedes Benz opened Salmaan’s eyes to the concept that he could ‘get paid to learn’ – and he checked out banking and accountancy options before deciding he was most attracted to insurance. “The process was really interesting and I was intrigued at the idea of combining my interest in economics and politics with protecting companies against the risk they face doing business in different countries.

“Companies make big investments in different economies and those can go wrong if governments decide to confiscate their property or their cash, so my team works with companies to look at what they need to do to protect themselves. You need to be looking at how much that might cost and what are the chances of something going wrong”.

Two years into the scheme and Salmaan is well on track to securing his CII diploma, the same qualification which graduates work towards. The only difference is the level of support offered while training. Salmaan explains: “We spend around 20% of our time training, broken up into different sessions. As an apprentice you have more structured study, with lessons covering each module on a course. But you end up taking the same exam.”

Another plus for Salmaan is the fact that the London insurance market is so closely co-located. He reckons he has met 140 underwriters at over 40 companies during his time as an apprentice. He has attended 28 networking sessions, plus he’s had the benefit of being mentored by two insurance market executives, one from within the business and another through the insurance cultural awareness network. “I can’t think of any profession that gives you a chance to work in so many different settings with so many different people. It’s more varied even than consulting”.

Charlotte’s original plan was to qualify as a lawyer, but a chance encounter while on work experience led her to develop her investigative skills helping businesses recover when catastrophe strikes – more detective than defence.

Having studied English literature at Manchester University, Charlotte was unsure what to do next and was considering a career as a lawyer until she met a specialist loss adjuster. “I was doing some work experience in a City law firm when I was introduced to a loss adjuster. Frankly I had no idea what he did” said Charlotte “but he was involved in looking at the effects of the first Ukraine war on businesses and he travelled a lot – all of which sounded very interesting so I went to spend the summer there and found that I really loved the role.”

Once something goes wrong – for example goods get confiscated in a war, then the loss adjuster steps in like a detective to work out what has happened and how much it will cost to put right.

After four years, Charlotte moved into claims handling – working for Canopius, an insurance company. “Being the claims professional means you are responsible for ensuring the insurance policy pays out as it should, and in figuring out how to make things right when they have gone wrong. You are the link between the underwriter who sells the policy and the broker representing the client”.

Charlotte sees her role as seeing everyone’s point of view so she can get the best result of all parties. “I love fixing things and trying to solve a thorny problem. I work with political risks, so that can be everything from a government taking property or goods illegally, riots or terrorism. These cases are very personal to our clients and our job is to be there for them.

“This is a specialist area of insurance so you really get under the skin of the problems, you read the news – Ukraine, Israel etc, and you have clients who are in the middle of it. You also get to know the other experts in the market and we are a tight community”.

So, what makes handling claims so interesting? Charlotte’s view is “this is where the detail and the depth is. Underwriters are selling the product, we are delivering the promise. There is loads to get your teeth into and it’s great when you help a business get back on its feet”.