with the board and stakeholders, we
determined a strategy for the next three
years to make this a priority.“That was really the first thing, looking
at our strategic growth and that took
up probably the first six months of my
time. In the interim there were some
other changes I made. We had a senior
leadership team that had no women so
I immediately brought three females
onto the team of eight members. I’m a
big advocate of women in leadership.
Then there were a few smaller, more
tactical things.”CCI has a long history. It was founded
in 1911 and is one of the oldest
insurance companies in Australia. Fast
forward to today and it is a highly
diversified general insurance and
financial services provider, workingwith church institutions and the
broader community. Its product
portfolio includes property, liability and
workers’ compensation, as well as
motor vehicle, and investment
management services. CCI has roughly
250 employees who all understand and
uphold the organisation’s overarching
purpose. “That’s one advantage of
having been around for more than 100
years,” Roberto notes.The second element is the great deal of
knowledge the company has
accumulated over the years. “We know
our core clients incredibly well and we
are focused on current issues as well as
emerging issues for this particular
demographic of people,” he says. “There’s
an enormous amount of goodwill and a
caring type of culture in the company.
We’re very focused on doing the rightthing. For instance, we pay out on 98.8
per cent of claims. The way we see it is
that when there is a claim to pay, we will
look for why we should pay it rather
than the reasons why we shouldn’t pay
it, while of course doing the right things
from a regulatory perspective.”Roberto’s strategy going forward is
threefold. First, CCI wants to enhance
its proposition to clients. That means
developing new models to connect with
them such as easy-to-use digital portals,
coming up with solutions that are
focused on clients’ future needs, and
working proactively and consistently
with some of the more prominent
customers to get them involved in the
end solution. Furthermore, CCI wants
to build the organisational capability
not only around systems, but also
around people. This will in turn develop
an enhanced experience for clients and
further reinforce relationships.The second part of the strategy is to
expand and to look at new ways to
grow. “For this we are looking at areas
that we haven’t focused strongly enough
on in the past, including aged care and
tertiary education,” Roberto says.The third area is to give back to the
church and community. “That includes
developing a charitable foundation to
provide grants back into the Catholic
community and, where it’s operationally
feasible and commercially right to do
so, procuring services from the Catholic
community — anything from property
to technology.”Roberto adds that staying on top of
what’s happening with the Australian
Royal Commission into Institutional
Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is also
a big priority. “Making sure we’re doing
the right thing by not only those
insured in the church, but also claims
by the victims of sexual abuse, is
extremely important,” he says.EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW