Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Anthony Sanderson on Outstanding Claims with the PriceWriter Ep 7
48 Plays1 year ago
In today's episode of Outstanding Claims, we dive into the world of pricing recruitment with Anthony Sanderson, the founder of Ascentia Partners. From his unconventional start in the prison service to the peaks of recruitment, he provides unique insights into the ever-changing landscape of insurance and financial services recruitment. The conversation touches on:
-Anthony's journey and expertise in the recruiting realm.
-The importance of adding value in the recruitment process.
-How technology is shaping the future of recruitment, but why the human touch remains indispensable.
Stay tuned to learn more about Anthony's vision for insurance recruitment, and the importance of doing the basics right while driving change in a niche industry.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Anthony Sanderson and Essentia Partners
00:00:00
Speaker
I didn't want to plug into an existing business as being part of a function. I wanted to go somewhere, set a stall, I'd do it right, do it the way it's my values, the way that we're done.
00:00:13
Speaker
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this episode where I sit down with Anthony Sanderson, founder of Essentia Partners. This interview originally aired in October 2003. Essentia Partners is a proud sponsor of the 2024 Price Writer Conference and we're excited that Anthony will be one of our featured speakers at the Leaders Retreat before the main conference.
00:00:38
Speaker
For our Pricewriter members, you'll have access to the full extended version of this enlightening conversation in our exclusive member area, launching later into 2024. To explore
A Non-Traditional Career Path
00:00:52
Speaker
membership options, head over to our website at www.pricewriters.com. Hello, Anthony. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Jeremy. Good to catch up again.
00:01:04
Speaker
And yeah, it is. It's always good to catch up with you, buddy. First question I wanted to ask you is, how did you get where you are today? Interesting question. I have probably not from a typical recruitment background. A lot of people have equipment seeking to get into it type of thing, which is very much true from my side. So I joined the prison service actually from college. So I skipped university, went into my first full-time career at Eddy.
00:01:32
Speaker
Enjoyed that did it for about ten years i progressed up to manage a level and then covered a lot of different elements within that outside of it from the day-to-day Do these a lot that in terms of contract management more commercially focused stuff for the establishment and that kind of thing and i think i just got to a point where i needed to get out into the wide world i wanted to get it something a bit more commercial where
00:01:56
Speaker
I could find a meritocracy and I felt I could add value and drive some forward, which ultimately ended up being recruitment slash sales in the end. And absolutely
The Recruitment Journey and Founding Essentia Partners
00:02:06
Speaker
no.
00:02:07
Speaker
kind of intent from the start to go into that line of work. I think from my perspective, I'd skip university and go into business consulting for Deloitte or something like that. So it was a good opportunity, I think, to get into a career where I could drive my own delivery, have my own little business within a business and then what I was looking after. And you get to speak to all of the different elements of the business and develop that commercial understanding, which admittedly back in
00:02:37
Speaker
you
00:02:37
Speaker
2016 was probably a bit laughing given that the nature of the role that I had before. So fell into that, did a year with Reed, who's the bigger high street type recruitment, focused on accountancy and finance, which was interesting. Definitely a good place to start and where the ropes went from there went on to Eames. Obviously insurance focused there. I thought it was an actuarial, but ended up doing a lot more of the personal lines pricing sort of work with one of actuarial with data science and analytics and so on around that.
00:03:07
Speaker
I just progressed from there, really. Learned a lot of themes, learned a lot from manager at the time to lead type role. And then took a slightly different segue and joined another company called Harnam in order to manage that. I did science team at San Francisco, which was a keen interest and increasingly had done more in that space. That was quite badly times with pandemic kicked in about six months. It was due to the U.S. and didn't, which in hindsight has worked well for me.
00:03:38
Speaker
And I think at that stage, I was quite keen to build something from scratch. I didn't want to plug into an existing business and be part of a function I wanted to go to and where I set the store. I do it right, do it the way it's my values, the way that we're done. So I joined Ruin. I spent the last three years there, which was excellent. I had a lot of autonomy, a lot of support from the business. And built out their general insurance function, which covered the London Market and Personal Alliance piece.
00:04:05
Speaker
and then data more broadly into insurance as a core focus, but also into banking, financial services, investment houses, that kind of thing. So it went very well. But as with anything, I guess the stages and got to the point towards the start of the year where I felt I was ready to do it for myself. So launched my new business essential partners in July, in credit for a couple of months now. And again, I'm focused on that insurance piece from my perspective, my business partner after RFS banking.
00:04:33
Speaker
sort of business in that sense and looking to grow from there. So yeah, it's been an evolution since I took a random leap into the world of recruitment all those years back, I guess.
Driving Change in the Insurance Industry
00:04:43
Speaker
What would you say is your mission for insurance recruitment? So I'm a big believer in doing the basics right. We've got a very niche industry here and there's a lot of opportunity to drive change.
00:04:59
Speaker
Now, some of that can be led and opportunities identified by myself and my peers in the market and our teams, but ultimately, I think it's
00:05:10
Speaker
developing the mindset from a client perspective, from an insurance perspective. What do we think we're going to need tomorrow? What will we need in five years' time? What will we need in 10 years' time? And there's always a balance to be had striking the balance between being, what do we need to do now? How do we make profitable as an insurance company? What people do we need? What skill sets tools, et cetera, do we need?
00:05:33
Speaker
But if you're laser focused on that and nothing else, you don't allow room for that R&D type role. You don't allow room for innovation and slightly different approaches. And if we don't do that, then we'll never really make any steps forward. So I think from my perspective, it's about underpinning.
00:05:51
Speaker
The people work that we do with an awareness of emerging markets, emerging technologies, current technologies, how those are utilized, and adding value where we can and advising in that sense, whether it's a competitor versus a competitor, whether it's an external challenger like an Amazon, for example, coming in to disrupt the market. I think we should have more forum and often that should be driven by people like myself, I would say, to create opportunities
00:06:16
Speaker
and yourself with the event planned at the end of the month to get people together to actually discuss the points and then engineer solutions that might not have value now. I think that's a great way of looking at it, getting the basics right and also always pushing forward as well and seeing what's coming, what's next on the horizon.
The Future of Recruitment: Balancing AI and Human Touch
00:06:36
Speaker
And then what would you say is your vision for the future of insurance recruitment? It's an interesting question which
00:06:44
Speaker
I probably can't manage through all in one go, but there are new technologies in the world and in recruitment that will help. We've seen JPT more recently and so on and different AI approaches to identifying candidates to managing that process. So I think it will evolve. I think there are probably some simple shorter term solutions that could help specifically in niche industries like insurance. We've got certain job boards that.
00:07:14
Speaker
you know, companies you've got to advertise on, repeaters might advertise on, candidates can apply by it. But I don't think we really have a community, more of a place where people can come together and network and that this could be an online place, some sort of forum or group, or somewhere where people can be visible. We've got 10 out of our LinkedIn, which is fantastic and so on. There's probably a bit more opportunity to pull that collective together and to network more efficiently.
00:07:42
Speaker
But I think ultimately that there's always a human required in recruitment for me. Some diehards will argue that it'll be taken over by Skynet in the future and we won't have a job. But ultimately to understand business requirements, to understand company culture, to really understand how somebody works, what makes them tick, what they need. And to be able to challenge that sometimes as well.
00:08:07
Speaker
You know, whether that's a client asking for a certain skill set and certain shape of person, then sometimes we can challenge that. We can provide alternative options. Likewise, when we talk about a candidate and it might not be in the sense of their next role, but actually how they engineer their career to where they ultimately want to be.
00:08:25
Speaker
The machine can't do that. There's always that human element, but I think technology will change probably the early stages of how we attract talent, how we identify prospects, how we, you know, get to the market quicker than other people. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in that space, but ultimately it's all going to come down to the person in touch.
00:08:46
Speaker
Brilliant. All right. Thanks a lot Anthony. Thanks for taking the time today and you have, you have a good rest of your day and I hope all goes well. Thanks Jeremy. All the best to you soon. Cool. Cheers.