On Tuesday 8th of March, NPG is making its #pledgeforparity by supporting the International Women’s Day (IWD). This year’s campaign, Planet 50-50 by 2030: Step it up for gender equality, highlights the contributions that women make to their personal and professional contexts, while also shining a spotlight on the discrimination still faced by many. To support the campaign, we would like to celebrate five of our numerous inspirational NPG women who are driving our business forward with their strategic acumen, creativity and dedication.
At NPG, we passionately believe that building a socially and culturally diverse workforce fosters a culture of innovation and collaboration that delivers better results for our clients and our firm. And this is even truer in a cross-border business like ours where meeting needs of an increasingly mobile clientele has become essential.
There is now strong evidence to back this up. For example, research from BMO Financial Group revealed that firms with a higher representation of women in senior management positions outperform those with comparatively fewer women at the top. In spite of this, the proportion of women in senior roles remains around 25% in S&P 500 companies, highlighting that many businesses are failing to tackle gender inequality. At NPG, we are proud that women make up 45% of the staff and nearly 40% at management level.
>>> The following women with diverse profiles and backgrounds actively contribute to support the value proposition of the Group and cultivate a culture of learning by creating a work-place that fosters accessibility, supportiveness and equality.
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“Multiculturalism is key in our international business but we also need to ensure a balance in terms of genders, experience and generations. Diversity in business is a driver of success.” |
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“What is crucial in my job is the human and relationship aspect. With all stakeholders involved, we strive to build a tailor-made solution fitting the clients’ needs. Research, proactivity and dynamism are key to succeed.” |
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“Technology will never replace the life assurance industry’s human talent completely. However, it will allow us to focus on tasks where we have a real added value and where our technical skills are highlighted.”
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“Another major challenge will be to ensure that personal data is protected in a digital world where the concepts of transfer and data location are getting more complex than ever.”
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Head of Marketing & Business Development “Client experience is the key criteria on which we must work to differentiate ourselves and stand out from the crowd.“
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HER MISSION
At NPG, we recognise that the experience of our clients is determined by the quality and satisfaction of our employees. My mission is to cultivate a team that is passionate about servicing customers, while also driving a culture of innovation within our group. A vital part of this is leveraging the highly-skilled pool of international talent that is attracted to Luxembourg’s reputation as a competitive financial centre. Given that NPG is a cross-border business working in seven markets, it is crucial to develop a multi-cultural workforce that understands clients from diverse geographic regions. I collaborate with NPG’s different business units to understand and define how to build effective teams so that we can provide a meaningful client experience.
HER VISION
To support NPG’s ongoing ambitions in the future, we first need to ensure that employees are aligned to the overall company strategy and philosophy, building a culture that prioritises both workforce and client satisfaction. To test and track this, we are launching an internal survey called ‘A great place to work’ to understand how our team perceive their workplace. This will help us to develop a range of action points that can support staff as we enter our next phase of business growth.
Secondly, we need to evaluate our competencies so that we can ensure they continue to support NPG’s overall strategy. This will likely include enhanced staff training programmes, internal mobility, or role reclassifications in some cases. In order to achieve this, we need to understand the competencies required for each job. As such, we have recently launched an improved evaluation system to gauge what is required in each employee’s function.
Finally, our mission is to ensure the retention of talent and professional experience in the company. It is important to drive the Group’s development and support our staff through effective career management. Multi-culturalism is critical in such an international business, but it is also vital to ensure a balance in terms of gender, experience and age. Diversity in business is a driver of success.
BEING A WOMAN…
I am so against inequality that I have never allowed it to have any influence on my professional or personal life. I think that personality is what matters most to succeed.
HER MISSION
Luxembourg is an exciting location to be a wealth planner because of its status of international financial centre. We have many mobile clients, which makes every interaction unique! As a Wealth Planner, it is my job to master this complexity and develop solutions that suit the clients’ needs and situations. I create customised contract structures, and adapt them during the policy’s life-cycle should the client’s situation change.
Life assurance requires a blend of skills – one must not simply understand inheritance, tax, and financial planning, but become an expert in all of them. I share my technical expertise with the sales team and our partners to increase awareness on the various usages of our solutions.
Given this level of personal engagement, the ability to develop strong and trustful relationships is vital to my role. When a client or his adviser contacts us, they expect us to find the best solution to manage the family wealth. This is definitely not a responsibility to be taken lightly. I must gain my clients’ trust by listening, understanding their needs, and proposing relevant solutions.
HER VISION
The wealth structuring field is becoming progressively more research based, as our clients become increasingly complex. The more internationally mobile our clients are, the more detailed the analysis of their situation should be and the more complex the solution will be. As our clients’ international interests expand, we are concentrating on developing new markets, notably outside of European borders. With an exponentially fast-paced regulatory environment, our legal and tax knowledge must be maintained to fully support our distribution intermediaries, partners and clients.
Being a deeply engrained research sector, life assurance is a topic that requires constant discussion and development. In expert-led seminars and conferences, we support partners, clients and each other to move the sector forward by integrating the needs of the market.
I am passionate about knowledge-sharing within the sector, as I teach at the Management School of the University of Antwerp and at the University of Luxembourg. This provides an excellent opportunity to increase awareness on the value of life assurance, advance recognition of NPG and the Luxembourg market, demonstrate our expertise, and of course, initiate new relationships with potential partners or future employees.
BEING A WOMAN…
When I began my career, life assurance contracts were seen as pure investment vehicles – and this was an extremely male-dominated domain. Today, the trend has reversed. Policies are now recognised as estate planning tools. In dealing with issues of succession and inheritance, which involve family and children, life assurance has taken on much more emotional attributes. And whether positively or negatively associated to females traits, the abilities to listen, be empathetic and have a multi-tasking nature have allowed women to gain much more credibility in the sector.
HER MISSION
My role is to ensure that our approach accounts for the diversity and multicultural background of our clients. As we have a cross-border business model, it is vital that we achieve an understanding of the local technical aspects in each market, on top of local Luxembourg technicalities. Finally, on the more sensitive side of the business, we need to uphold the confidentiality standards which our clients expect from us.
We are committed to deliver the best service at the best value to our customers by trying to balance five criteria – customers, staff, shareholders, budgets and processes. The Customer Service Department’s long term objectives centre on the need to have the right talent in the team and to identify new technologies and process improvements to support the development of the company.
HER VISION
As our clients have very different expectations of the services we offer, we need to be proactive in satisfying different types of clients. In general, older clients have fears about the security of digital channels and prefer to receive everything on paper by mail while other clients prefer to do everything online. Our biggest challenge in the coming years is to serve these two types of clients, but in the long term we realize that we need to invest more in automation, continuous improvements of our processes, and online services. Personally, I do not believe that technology will replace the life assurance industry’s human talent completely. However, it will allow teams to focus on tasks where they have a real added value and where their technical skills are highlighted.
In our industry, a client relationship can last 40 years or more due to the nature of our life assurance contracts. At several key milestones during that timeframe (marriage, birth, death, relocation, etc) customers will always require our advice and services to adapt and get the most benefit out of their contracts. With the added complexity of our clients being very internationally mobile, Customer Service teams will increasingly provide valued support and information.
Lastly, we recognise that every client is different, and to serve them better we have to know them better. In the future, if we want our wealthy clients to remain loyal, we will have to exceed their expectations, anticipate their needs and provide adequate tailored solutions. This necessarily involves getting closer to them and I am sure new technologies will aid us in doing so.
BEING A WOMAN…
I have found that being a woman in the financial sector can be very hard and I have experienced discrimination at certain points in my career. However, I think that what distinguishes women at work in general is their ability to multitask, their organisational skills and their enhanced resistance to stress. These qualities are transferable and reflected in women’s work.
HER MISSION
Managing compliance requirements and fighting fraud, money laundering and terrorism financing are critical to our ability to protect our company, our partners and our clients from reputational and financial risks. Part of my role involves carefully assessing the origin of funds against a set of risk criteria before accepting new business, as well as training our company staff to raise their awareness on money laundering and fraud prevention.
I am also involved in leading key projects for the Company such as the implementation of the FATCA and CRS regulations. At the heart of the compliance officer’s function is the analysis of the impact of new national and international regulations on the company’s business and its implementation. New legal frameworks are not always taking all specificities of the life assurance business into account so part of our role is to interpret how they apply to life assurance companies like ours. To support this, we are involved in working groups on specific topics at the ALCO (Association luxembourgeoise des Compliance Officer) or at the ACA (Association des Compagnies d’Assurance), which provide a platform for compliance officers in Luxembourg’s to share best practice and legal interpretations.
HER VISION
Regulations are constantly evolving so we need to continue our education through a yearly training programme to understand new regulations at both the European and national level and anticipate their impacts. NPG operates under the EU’s Freedom to Provide Services stipulation, meaning that our contracts have to comply with the rules of all markets in which we are active. To this end, leveraging the collaboration and interactivity with both industry players and internal stakeholders is key to succeed.
The next step is the implementation of those regulations which all aim to better protect the investors by improving the quality of the information we are providing them, the adequacy and appropriateness of our products, the transparency about fees and potential conflicts of interest (IDD, PRIIPS and Twin Peaks 2 in Belgium). In addition, we need to comply with the international standards governing tax transparency and exchange of information (CRS, FATCA).
Finally with the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) another major challenge for the coming years will be to continue to ensure that personal data is protected against access by unauthorised persons in a digital world where the concepts of transfer and data location are getting more complex ever.
BEING A WOMAN…
Being a woman has never really influenced my career, having the opportunity to work on numerous major projects and initiatives. But balancing a professional and family life is a daily challenge. This requires organisational skills at every level and to achieve this, I am constantly looking for efficiency.
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Monique Vaclavek “Client experience is the key criteria on which we must work to differentiate ourselves and stand out from the crowd.” |
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HER MISSION
Many may not automatically relate life assurance to emotional depth, but it is a product unlike any other. Life assurance policies are tied to issues of family, birth, and death and as such elicit a full spectrum of emotions. Emotional intelligence must be applied in our field of work; we have to inspire confidence and show sensitivity to those who wish to entrust us with the management of their assets.
My role at NPG is centred on pushing business development forward, by harnessing industry knowledge and business intelligence. We carry out market research which allows us to identify opportunities, quantify and prioritize market segments, develop thought leadership, understand customer needs and detect new trends. This insight has allowed us to become heavily involved in product development and commercialisation while also handling NPG’s general brand management and corporate communications.
HER VISION
The life assurance market is never static and I predict there will be several changes to the field in years to come. Primarily, these changes are based on having one single global market, spread out across several countries, each with their own specificities and different consumer segments, media approaches, and distribution channels. Marketers are waging a battle against this complexity.
One of the biggest factors driving this evolution is the digital dilemma. Although the digi-sphere has accelerated life assurance companies’ social presence, lead generation, and the development of online products, it has also undermined clients’ confidence in the security of their data and privacy. This must be carefully balanced with their needs when it comes to transparency and information.
Another factor contributing to the changing marketplace is the influx of a younger generation of clients with different information consumption patterns. Millennial customers live in an all-mobile, all-social world, and seem to be easily influenced and not specifically loyal to any said company.
This contrasts to an existing, older generation of customers who are generally slightly less informed on the importance of financial and estate planning and the possibilities offered by life assurance. Then, of course, there are those clients who are in between.
To manage the complexity of servicing these diverse client segments, we will have to listen to their feedback with a structured client insight programme. This helps to support and improve their customer and brand experience. Client experience is the key criteria on which we must work to differentiate ourselves.
BEING A WOMAN…
The financial sector remains a male-dominated field, especially when it comes to managerial roles. Nonetheless, this has never stopped me… to the contrary, I like challenges. My temperament has always pushed me to strive in my endeavours. In an industry where for a long time women had something to prove, it drives me to surpass expectations.