Diary of an Insurer: Charles Taylor’s Nikki Richmond-Jones

Monday

It’s a long drive to the office and I love a bit of music for the journey. This morning it’s Fleetwood Mac, turned up extra loud for my last two minutes in the car – the perfect way to start the working day.

Over the weekend, I’ve been in close contact with our medical assistance teams. They’ve done a brilliant job managing a complex repatriation for a seriously ill patient, arranging her flight back to the UK for lifesaving medical care. 

So, I’m looking forward to thanking them properly this morning when we get together for our post-weekend check-in.

As well as medical assistance, I have oversight of all our travel claims services, managed from our offices in the UK, Mallorca and Singapore. 

This includes our medical risk assessment, business transformation, customer care and training, and development teams. And because we support travel insurance policyholders in need overseas 24/7, we’re always on call.

The rest of my Monday is a mix of meetings with our aviation claims team in Asia and a travel insurance client here in the UK. The latter is a positive performance review, with a deep dive into our digital claims delivery.

Tuesday

I’m an early bird, so I’m up before the family to read my book and then start on some work while my kids get ready for school. 

I absolutely love doing the school run (on foot) and by the time I’m back in my home office, I’ve done 5000 steps and it’s only 8.30am.

Today I’m focusing on our new immersive assessment centres and making sure the team has everything in place for the next lot of job hopefuls. We’ve had huge staff growth over the last few years and our interactive assessments help ensure that candidates are a good fit.

In the afternoon, I catch up with some of our frontline assistance staff to hear how their coaching with the Samaritans is going. 

It’s a popular initiative that’s helping them build connections with customers facing traumatic emergencies, without taking on their problems themselves.

After sitting down all day, I’m ready for some evening badminton with my son. Neither of us can play and our stomach muscles get a good work out from all the laughing.

Wednesday

This morning I’m back in the office for one-to-one catch ups with my team.  I start with our business transformation manager, analysing our latest repatriation data and looking at any improvements we can make. When I finish the morning, I think about how lucky I am to work with such amazing people.

My lunch break is a quick walk round the lake by the office with our chief medical officer, then we grab some street food to share before we’re back at our desks.

Later, I’m joining my customer experience manager to take the tea trolley round the office, and it’s laden with doughnuts. 

We do this a few times a year to show our appreciation for our fantastic employees and to chat to everyone on the ops floor. This time I get some positive feedback from staff about our new web-based claims system.

After an update on a new travel insurance client in Australia and the usual 8pm customer case handover from our day to our night teams, I can finally switch off.

Thursday

I’m heading to our office in Mallorca today with the rest of the management team, so it’s a 4am start for an early flight. Despite the lack of sleep, I’m looking forward to it, not least because the office is right on the beach (although it’s far too cold to swim).

As a management team, we spend a lot of time bouncing ideas off each other, no matter how busy our week is, so the journey gives us a good stretch of time to do this.

After a quick check in at the Palma office – and a jealous look at the beach view – we’re off to a local hotel to give an update to our team on how the business as a whole is performing and what’s coming up next for us. 

Then it’s out for drinks and dinner. Food and drink are a massive thing in Palma and it’s great to see so many staff coming along, even if they’ve been working from home that day.

Friday

Normally I work a four-day condensed week, Monday to Thursday, but today I’m semi-working as we’re flying home.

We’re back in the UK just in time for our claims and assistance ‘going into the weekend’ handover, so I’m soon on Teams with everyone to make sure live customer cases are shared and weekend staff are fully prepped. 

They’re so good, I know I can leave them to it, but I’m always happy to have any important decisions run past me over the weekend.

In the meantime, at home we’re ready for some holiday planning. 

Travelling with my children is one of my greatest passions, and our last holiday will be a hard act to follow: a fortnight in Thailand’s Khao Lak, with a visit to James Bond island and an ethical elephant sanctuary. We’re determined to find somewhere similar to do some bamboo rafting.