How would you describe a typical day on the Finalta Insurance team?
Honestly every day is different. I try to come into the office as much as possible so normally start my day catching up with my team over coffee (remotely if needed). It then tends to be a mixture of analysis, project management, and working with my clients to discuss trends we are seeing in the market. Depending on where we are in our project cycle, I normally have the freedom to decide where I want to focus my time.
As a Manager, what are the main challenges you face in your role?
I started here as an associate analyst, so my main challenge has been learning to take a step back from doing the analysis. I work with a great team who are extremely capable and have brilliant ideas, so making sure each individual has enough tailored support, whilst maintaining my understanding behind the rational of each idea is a challenge I currently enjoy facing.
What skills have helped you during your journey at Finalta?
Getting comfortable with speaking to any seniority of colleagues and clients has really helped me. You are asked a question because you are the expert on the subject, and learning it’s ok to not always know the answer straight away has been really fundamental in my ability to feel comfortable leading meetings.
Apart from client work, you are actively involved in 'Diversity and Inclusion' workstream. What are the main initiatives of this workstream? Are there any particular achievements you are proud of?
The workstream was founded when we first started to work remotely due to the pandemic. We wanted to find a way for everyone to feel supported and it snowballed into a global team who are passionate about celebrating diversity and encouraging allyship in all situations.
We have run multiple events that I am proud of, but what always reinforces our achievements is when a new joiner highlights how great it is that other people in the company care about diversity and inclusion. It has become really important to know who our passionate and supportive colleagues of each network are - especially across countries and when working remotely during the pandemic, and it’s been great to see how many people have become actively involved. The very first external panel we ran on Allyship alongside our McKinsey Head of UK office was pretty cool though...
What advice would you give to someone joining Finalta?
Get to know everyone in the wider Finalta group as much as you can. Everyone is super friendly and interesting, and the community feeling is part of my favorite reason for working here. Also you are surrounded by a lot of smart people, so if you are ever stuck it helps to have a team of diversly skilled people supporting you.
