Diversity & Inclusion in the insurance industry (With Marc McKenna-Coles)

Welcome to Insurance Covered! The podcast that looks at the inner workings of the insurance industry with the help of expert guests. Our guest this week is Marc McKenna-Coles, Global Diversity & Inclusion Manager at Lloyd's, and we will be discussing diversity and inclusion in the insurance industry.

We start by discussing Marc's pathway into insurance, which is one of the more circuitous routes. Marc started as a store manager at Disney, before moving to the Disney Cruise side of the business as 'Merchitainment Manager'. In 2019 Marc made the switch to Lloyd's to work on their global I&D initiatives. Marc explains the jump isn't as different as it may seem, his roles have always been customer focused and that is very much the same with the work he does at Lloyd's.

We then go on to discuss what we mean by Diversity & Inclusion, Marc explains it's making the workplace (for employers and customers) a welcoming environment regardless of features, characteristics and beliefs. "It's ensuring we have a nice spread of people from all different backgrounds… by having a fully inclusive workforce brings out the best in people, creating an environment where everyone can flourish which is obviously to the advantage of the company as well". Marc goes on to discuss his role at Lloyd's: "So my role is split between both the corporation and the market so I'm very much trying to bring that diverse and inclusive mindset and lens into the corporation how we can be attractive to a more diverse range of people".

Marc goes on to showcase some of the tools he has been developing, that are readily available to anyone even outside of the insurance industry. He has developed reports around ethnic minorities and ethnic diversity in the workplace, last year he helped produce a report on trans and non-binary inclusion as well as a report on family care policies, so the work they do is far reaching and all available here.

We go on to discuss one of the biggest I&D initiatives set up by Lloyd's, the Dive In festival. Dive In is a global movement in the insurance sector to support the development of inclusive workplace cultures. Its mission is to enable people to achieve their potential by raising awareness of the business case and promoting positive action for diversity in all its forms. This means looking beyond traditional definitions of diversity to level the playing field for talent comprehensively including gender, gender identity, age, cultural background, sexual orientation, social mobility, faith, caring responsibilities, mental health and physical impairments. 2020's Dive involved 35 countries, we ran 144 events across the globe, and had over 30,000 individuals participate across those 144 events.

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