Untangling Financial Lines

Belen Navarro Rull just arrived from the U.S. and is preparing to have her photo taken outside the headquarters of Zurich Insurance Group. Latin America’s Head of Financial Lines for Zurich’s Commercial Insurance should be jet-lagged – she says she’s jet-lagged – but, on the contrary, she’s buzzing with energy.

She’s admiring the weather on a recent sun-drenched morning, warm “but thank goodness not as humid as Florida.” She’s fiddling with her necklace to make it just right for the photo. (“I love statement necklaces,” she says.) She’s even dissecting the news about Lionel Messi coming to Inter Miami (despite the Granada, Spain native being a lifelong Real Madrid supporter herself). But more importantly Belen is here to talk business.

Belen is in town, after all, for the global leadership meeting for Financial Lines, with specific sessions focused on strategy, vision and challenges. “The beauty of this,” she says, “is that we’re having specific meetings with each global manager of Financial Lines and Cyber. And having these sessions face-to-face makes a big difference.”

A summit where Zurich executives are not only present but there to interact. “Here, you feel like people in top management care about you,” says Belen, who has been with Zurich since 2018 after 19 years with American International Group and two with QBE Insurance Group. “At other companies, the approach of the senior managers was very, very different. Here, it’s more human. You feel part of what’s going on, and I like that a lot.”

For the uninitiated, Financial Lines – as opposed to self-explanatory Personal Lines, which insure individuals – is, in Belen’s words, “hard to explain to those outside insurance.” She pauses and then says with a chuckle, “You know, I’ve been trying to define it to my family since I started – and I’m still trying.”

Essentially, it’s a suite of products offered by Commercial Insurance led by Sierra Signorelli, the CEO of CI, and casts a wide net of specialized solutions covering a broad spectrum of professional and financial risks. It includes directors’ and officers’ liability, which protects the personal assets of corporate directors and officers against claims for wrongful acts in managing a company; professional liability; crime insurance, which protects the company against losses caused by the dishonest acts of its employees; and cyber insurance.

A life-changing move

Belen got opportunity to move overseas after 12 years as an underwriter at AIG in Spain. It was a big decision. “I had my house, I had my family, I was in my comfort zone,” she says. “But it was a moment where I wanted something else, and I said, ‘why not?’ And it changed my life.

“You never know what’s going to happen,” she continues. “You never know if it’s going to work. I have friends who decided to come back to Spain after a few years. In my case I thought I’d stay two years, get the experience, and move back to Europe. But I decided to stay, and it was the best decision ever. Obviously, you have sacrifices. Your family is far away, and I lost my father while I was abroad, which was really hard, but all things considered, there’s been more positives.”

Speaking of her dad, she says he was so proud of her for moving to the U.S., that he bought a small American flag and kept it in the house. Her family came for extensive visits, which she describes as a “very rich experience for them.” Then she pauses and adds wistfully: “And I’m sure my father is still proud – wherever he is.”

So, what do you do for a living?

When Belen tells people what she does, they have two reactions, she says. “At first, they think, ‘oh, how boring.’ That or, ‘what do you think of my car insurance?’”

But what sounds dry to some, for Belen the ever-changing nature of Financial Lines and Cyber makes it dynamic, and, dare we say, fun. And when she really explains the nitty-gritty of what she does, “then they say, ‘oh wow, that’s exciting.’ And they’re right. I never have a boring day.”

That nitty-gritty includes implementing strategy, supporting the countries’ business operations, establishing consistent technical underwriting approaches, managing the portfolio’s performance, implementing competitive product offerings and focusing on talent development.

“We work a lot on how we can create a great customer experience, instilling confidence in our clients,” she says. “So, what do they need? What’s the right solution for the client?

Like, for instance, when she helped manage a deal between insurance broker Marsh McLennan and a U.S.-based telecom company that expanded to Latin America. She helped both parties navigate within Zurich to provide an international solution that included many Financial Lines products.

“It was a complex structure,” she says, “especially because it was new. They just built their operations in LatAm so they didn’t have a headquarters in a specific country. It was challenging.”

But she was able to execute it using her vast contacts. “This is something I do a lot – connecting the dots to always help the client.”

Keeping close ties

Belen always tries to keep close relationships with those clients. Earlier this year, that helped her again when a Mexican supermarket chain expanded to the U.S. It started with a lunch. They knew they needed coverage, but about how much, or what exactly, they were still undecided. So Belen sat down with them, mapped-out their exposures and offered training sessions about cyber and the other covers. “A week later,” she says, “they placed the order.” She found out later that they appreciated her openness and offering those training sessions. “That was key for them. They felt that Zurich, the whole team, was there for them, and they felt that a big corporation was behind them with a lot of people providing solutions. And they even invited me to visit their stores, and I promised them I will!”

Asked if her outgoing personality helps in her job, she says it probably does. “But I always try to be myself. I don’t try to sell something I don’t believe in. I always try to be transparent and honest. If I can’t do something, I’m going to tell the client.”

She leads a team of 33 people across underwriting teams in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico. With that comes a bit of travel, something she enjoys. (She searches for pre-Columbian jewelry across the Americas whenever she can and even met her husband on a flight from Mexico City.) But she has also seen those in less fortunate circumstances.

“That’s also what I like about this job,” she says. “The experience has made me more open-minded and more appreciative of the values of different cultures and countries. You change your vision of the world. It makes you a humble and more well-rounded person. You see that many people don’t have what you have. We take a lot of what we have for granted.”

Photography: Joël Giroud