We chat with Tom Melvin, Head of Pricing at INSHUR about his journey from astrophysics to insurance and their shared similarities. We talk about the ways Tom’s role has encouraged him outside of his comfort zone, and how he juggles responsibilities across various teams.
Read on for some great advice about the importance of storytelling behind data, and guidance for anyone looking at internal promotion themselves.
Congratulations on your recent promotion! Can you explain the interview process, and share a bit about the presentation that got you the job?
The process was fairly similar to any external person interviewing, aside from the culture fit as I’ve been at INSHUR for four years now.
The interview itself was an hour with members of Senior Management. It was fairly unstructured, allowing me total control over what I presented. I prepared slides beforehand, highlighting key areas where I thought we could do better. This included improving how we collaborate with other teams at INSHUR, getting more from our external partners, and most importantly being more data-driven. The last point is especially poignant for me, as Pricing is a world of numbers and analysis. I strongly believe all our decisions can and should be supported by data. That way we can demonstrate to the rest of the business and our partners, why we made the decision we did. It also allows us to properly measure how successful a price change has been, in turn making us more accurate in the future.
Going into the interview, I think there was an assumption that I would have the same thoughts and input as previous people in the role, but I wanted to challenge that. I presented what we do well and where I saw room for a new approach based on my time in the team and data analysis. I don’t think they expected that from me.
Pitching like this is a good way of figuring out if your vision is also what the business wants. Are you aligned in what you think should happen compared to what they're going to drive?
Tell me about your role and how it impacts INSHUR.
The Head of Pricing role involves overseeing the development, implementation, and management of pricing strategies across all of our EU insurance products.
In essence, I want to ensure that all our customers are provided with a fair and accurate price based on their individual attributes, whilst making sure we’re aligned with business goals. It’s a cliche but I genuinely don't think I've had two days the same.
In the last six to eight months I’ve been working on building on relationships through a combination of being collaborative, driven by data, and being more proactive.
Instead of waiting for change to come to us, I am preparing multiple proposals to go and chase the change we want. It has changed the way we talk and now we’re all more focused on growth. My approach to growth is slower, and more incremental so that we’re able to monitor and track in a more controlled manner.
Another change is the way we use data, we're going to use the insights we have to model our products individually. We’ll be able to use more data from partners to make the products more competitive where we need them to be. We can then make changes that have a real effect on the market.
There's a fair amount of number crunching and analysis I do, that’s my bread and butter. If someone has a question that involves using data, either myself or one of the team are going to be the people who get to coding to try and find the answer.
In fact I made a change at the end of last year that didn't work. Within a week we pulled it revisited it and started again.
A few years ago I'd have never wanted to do anything risky. But at INSHUR there is freedom to test and sometimes fail as long as you monitor results and learn something.
What is your working background and what keeps you passionate about working at INSHUR?
Before insurance, I was a researcher in astrophysics. I’ve always had an interest in numbers, looking at data and trying to find solutions to things that people don’t know the answers to.
When I left the research world, I wanted my next role to combine both of those things and after an initial interview, insurance felt like a good fit. I started out as a Pricing Analyst, and quickly realised I enjoyed seeing the real-world effect of what my analysis could do.
What has kept me ignited at INSHUR is the amount of data we hold, and I enjoy digging into it. I barely feel like we’ve scratched the surface of what we can get from our data and what we can deliver to our customers and the business.
What's one aspect of your role that people might not know much about or that they might find surprising?
I'm going to split this into two slightly different things, but they are linked!
While the role is data-based, you need to be creative and have a sense of curiosity. When presented with a problem, you have to test different ways of solving it before you get to a solution, and that takes a lot of initiative. I'm encouraging my team to try new things instead of relying on what’s been done before. That comes from my background in data science - you have to try, test, and try again until you get a result. That’s how you enact step-by-step change.
The other aspect is the ability to present ideas through storytelling. If I put a table and a graph in front of you right now without context, you’re not going to be able to take in all the information. If you can't bring the rest of the business on the journey with a story behind the data, then you’re never going to sell it. You need to be able to speak to people at every level of the business and make them understand your idea.
Do you have any advice for anyone looking at internal promotion at the minute?
The best advice I have is to take a step back and look at what you think already works well, what doesn’t work so well, and how you'd address that. There’s no point presenting without any solutions. Prepare your facts and figures to back up what you're saying to prove that it's going to make a difference. That will resonate more than just stating your opinions on what you think the business should do next.
If you’re comfortable, a good idea is to chat with your managers or someone in a similar role to what you’re applying for and get their advice on your presentation. Personally, I shared my pitch with people in my team and my manager to get an idea of whether applying was a good idea or not. There’s no point in going in blind.
Finally, be prepared to compromise and answer some difficult questions about it as you talk to the interviewers.
What are some of the main ways that your responsibilities have now changed?
How I use my time is very different. I went from self-managing with a few meetings a week to full-on recruitment, creating strategies, and creating plans. This was what I had joined INSHUR for in the first place, so it’s been great to reach that personal goal.
The biggest responsibility change is making sure the Pricing team is supported and can grow. Making sure they know who to talk to in the business if they have a problem. But also making the team as visible as possible if people have questions for us, and building relationships. It’s trying to avoid them falling into some of the potholes I used to fall into.
Another big change is stakeholder management. I like having accountability on my shoulders for getting things right and I will happily admit when I get things wrong as long as we've tried something.
Something I am working on in this new role is how to be more authoritative. It has driven me out of my comfort zone, but it’s a learning curve that has worked so far.
What’s your guilty pleasure?
I think most people know I enjoy gardening, but what they don't know is that I have an unhealthy obsession with buying plants for the garden. Loads of bulbs, anything I can get my hands on. I have baskets of online shopping that I don't end up buying.
Others might go clothes shopping, I sit and do the same with gardening bits. It possibly makes me more middle-aged than I am!
One last question - would you rather be forced to sing along to or dance to every single song you ever hear?
I would rather be forced to dance, I'm an avid disliker of karaoke. Not because of everyone else enjoying it, but because everyone who does enjoy it thinks that they can force you into singing it and you'll enjoy it. And I don't. I would rather dance any day of the week than sing.
Mind you, I sing quite a lot now that there's a small child around the house. But I also dance a lot more than that.
Victoria: Popping and locking to nursery rhymes.
Tom: Definitely popping and locking - a lot of that at this age!
