Joanne Wojcik
Head of Event Programming
Business Insurance magazine
Recognizing that the commercial insurance industry was – and still is – a largely male-dominated field, Business Insurance magazine launched the Women to Watch Awards in 2006 to identify and shed a spotlight on those women who have the potential to become its future leaders.
Each year, a panel of Business Insurance senior editors selects 25 honorees from hundreds of nominations submitted by readers based on recent notable professional achievements, their influence over the industry and marketplace, and their own contributions to the advancement of women. The editors also tried to imagine what likely next steps these already successful women might take to further their careers.
For a decade, the profiles of these Women to Watch honorees were published in a December issue of Business Insurance, and awards were presented at a ceremony held annually in New York City. Business Insurance added an educational component to the program in 2011 with the introduction of a Leadership Workshop featuring many alumni of this elite group of female industry professionals. In 2014, this event was expanded into a full-day conference intended to further foster women’s progress by identifying the challenges they face and offering advice and actionable solutions. The conference was open to both men and women who support achieving true gender parity among the senior ranks of the commercial insurance industry and related fields.
The year 2015 marked the 10th anniversary of this unique recognition program, and Business Insurance held an evening gala to fete that year’s honorees. In addition, Business Insurance recognized three prior-year honorees for their continuing contributions to the advancement of women in the insurance industry: 2008 honoree Bonnie Boone, senior vice president at Marsh USA, who launched a networking group for women of color; 2006 honoree Corbette Doyle, lecturer of leadership, policy, and organizations at Vanderbilt University, for her research into the influence of women serving on corporate boards; and 2006 honoree Inga Beale, who in 2014 became the first female CEO of Lloyd’s of London, a 350-year-old institution that didn’t even admit women until the 1970s.
As we have seen from the women we have profiled in this annual feature over the past decade, the pool of talented and dynamic female executives holding key positions within the sector is growing and will continue to flourish as barriers to women’s advancement are removed. Unfortunately, there still are not yet enough women at the top levels of management in the commercial insurance industry to represent the diversity of the workforce coming in. In fact, while more than half of entry-level positions in the insurance industry are held by women, just 12 percent of senior managers are women, and only 1 percent of the CEOs in insurance are women.
This book, which features a collection of essays by several past Women to Watch honorees, is a tribute to those women who have broken through the proverbial “glass ceiling” in the commercial insurance industry and are continuing to battle for gender parity among its executive ranks. Women’s advancement in this and other industries is not just a “women’s issue”; it is an economic imperative. In order to have a competitive workforce and a robust global economy, companies need to leverage the full potential of all of their talent – both women and men.
Having more women in leadership positions also is good for business. It’s not that one gender has any greater ability than the other; it is that a more diverse group makes for better decision making and corporate performance. A recent study by Credit Suisse Research found that companies with higher female representation at the board level or among senior management have better financial performance and higher stock market valuations. Moreover, the more female board members there were, the better the companies performed. Those whose boards included at least 25 percent women delivered a 22.8 percent greater annualized return than those with no female representation. Another study by Catalyst found that companies with the highest number of female executives outperform those with the fewest number of women executives, yielding a 26 percent greater return on invested capital and 16 percent more in sales.
Given the small number of women currently in the high-level roles in the insurance industry, men are a crucial part of the equation. The fact is, when male leaders participate in gender diversity initiatives, they are far more successful than they would be otherwise. Research by McKinsey & Co. identified three key attributes shared by organizations that have made significant strides toward achieving gender diversity:
● First, companies with more women on the board in 2007 had more women in top leadership positions in 2011.
