Rising Star: Alex Sorrie, Allianz Insurance

How did you get into insurance?

I graduated from Newcastle University with a mathematics degree and decided to pursue a career in financial services industry.

A summer internship at Siemens taught me that I wasn’t going to be motivated enough by finance alone and insurance stood out to me as one of the more interesting financial services. I applied for the claims graduate scheme at Allianz and I haven’t looked back since.

What has been the biggest challenge in your career to date?

There have been many challenges, ranging from learning how to handle claims to developing into a leadership role and managing a team of people. But the biggest challenge I’ve faced so far was taking on the responsibility of co-leading a global internal claims data project and presenting the outputs internationally.

What would your advice be to other newcomers to the industry?

The insurance industry is undergoing a huge digital transformation and there are still vast opportunities to change and make improvements.

My advice to any newcomer would be to spend time building up business and processes knowledge, keep up to date with emerging trends and don’t underestimate data and how powerful it can be.

I’m currently leading strategy work on data and insight, and improving data literacy is a core part of what we’re trying to achieve. Most importantly though, innovate and don’t be afraid to share your ideas.

Do you have a mentor and what have they taught you?

My dad is my mentor. He had a career within a global company outside of insurance and while I was growing up he would sometimes talk about some of the challenging times he faced at work and how he managed those circumstances.

The most important thing he taught me from a business perspective was that I should always look to be supportive and considerate of others at work and to be friendly with colleagues - 40 hours a week is a long time to spend with people you don’t get on with.

Where do you hope to be in 10 years?

It’s difficult to say, as so much can change in that time. The most important things to have in any job are to be stretched in my day-to-day role and have the opportunity to continue to learn.

What achievements are you most proud of?

I’ve won a couple of awards internally, one of which was for a data-driven claims project. I was nominated as the UK representative for an 18-month international project to prove the concept of data-driven claims automation. I operated as technical lead to coordinate the group in the creation and testing of a successful new processes.

I also won a technical excellence award last year for the implementation of data quality management processes within claims.

“Alex is a huge asset to the data function at Allianz, having both strong technical competence, as well as a keen ability to think strategically.”

Andy Roberts, head of data, claims, Allianz Insurance