The Future of Insurance – Keith Daly, Chief Claims Officer, Zurich North America

The Future of Insurance

Keith Daly is Chief Claims Officer for Zurich North America, where he is responsible for leading the Claims unit in delivering transactional excellence in claim handling and achieving a consistent level of superior customer service.

Prior to his current position, Daly was President of Personal Lines for Farmers Insurance®, where he was responsible for product development, strategy and underwriting efforts for the Farmers® Personal Lines, Bristol West® and Foremost®lines of business. Daly was also responsible for Toggle, Farmers’ subscription-based Renters Insurance program. He also previously served as Chief Claims Officer for Farmers, and before that led their Property and Auto Claims units. Prior to Farmers, Daly served in a number of senior leadership roles with 21st Century Insurance and was the Vice President of Field Claims Operations. His career in the insurance industry began in 1993 as a claims representative trainee at Progressive Casualty Insurance Co. in Atlanta, Georgia.

Daly earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Florida State University.

Highlights from the Show

• Keith Daly started his career at the front lines of Claims, doing First Notice of Loss intake, and has progressed through roles and lines, becoming Chief Claims Officer at Farmers, and now at Zurich North America
• Keith sees three industry-level challenges looking ahead that no single carrier can solve alone
  • Climate
  • Talent
  • Social Inflation & Nuclear Verdicts
• Talent is about a lot more today than it was, and the social component matters more to new talent, which is part of why Zurich is focused on efforts like they have going in New Orleans around the Zurich Classic golf event where they give back to the community, which they’ve done for the past 19 years with nearly $30 million
• They run an apprenticeship program in conjunction with several schools and other companies (like Aon) to find new talent, support the cost of their education, give them a career path and provide the structure and support to help them through the program and beyond
  • This includes specific time to study, mentorship, coaching and more to help ensure people graduate from the program and stay for a long-term career in insurance and at Zurich
  • This takes changing culture to really mean what you say and do it
• Zurich started a Defense Counsel Summit to try to share best practices amongst the industry to find solutions that help counter the plaintiff’s bar’s tactics to change the path of indemnity outcomes that are driving insurance severity and rates
• They’ve also worked together with partners, regulators and legislators to try to drive changes in the underlying dynamics, like the new legislation that was recently passed in Florida
• Keith sees opportunity in Data and AI, but we should also think about what it would mean for the plaintiff’s bar and others to bring new suits and claims

This episode is brought to you by The Future of Insurance Volume III. The Collaborators, part of the Future of Insurance thought leadership series (future-of-insurance.com) from Bryan Falchuk.

Follow the podcast at future-of-insurance.com/podcast for more details and other episodes.

Music courtesy of Hyperbeat Music, available to stream or download on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music and more.