Driving SaaS Transformation in Insurance with Key Executive Hires

Our client is a major global insurance firm which over recent years has commercialized its technology to create a suite of highly analytical insurance technology solutions. Having established itself as a core software provider to hundreds of insurance companies across the US, UK, Europe and Asia, they now face a fresh challenge in their industry from the emergence of numerous SaaS insurtechs which are fighting for the same market share. They recognised that if they wanted to stay ahead of the competition and keep up with today’s technological demand, they had to transform from a traditional on-premise software provider to a modern, cloud-native SaaS provider.

The Challenge – Our client understood that if they wanted to build a truly best-in-class SaaS product, they needed to start by hiring the right leadership talent which would bring a true diversity of thought leadership to their existing team. To successfully design and deliver their future vision, not only did they need the right technical leadership, but they also needed to appoint a commercial leader for their new SaaS model. This meant defining two new executive leadership roles – a Chief Architect and a Head of Sales. As experts in the insurance and insurtech industries, our client retained Hanover to develop a pipeline of top talent for both appointments, conducting an international search for talent across the US and the UK.

The Solution – Once Hanover was engaged for the assignment, we used our proven methodology to find only the most qualified pipeline of talent for our client. We made sure to look outside their industry and competitors, ensuring our talent pool was diverse and included candidates they had never seen before. Right now, the candidate market for SaaS experts across all functions and disciplines is competitive and there is a high demand for top technology leaders both technical and commercial. In addition to our research and sourcing efforts, we were able to leverage many referrals from the relationships we’ve built with a network of CTOs and Chief Revenue Officers of leading SaaS in the insurtech / fintech industries and beyond. Compiling a global market map of candidates for each role, we then engaged and interviewed more than 30 prospective candidates, assessing technical and cultural fit before ultimately presenting eight key candidates who were shortlisted for our client. Hanover was able to provide strategic consultation from candidate assessments to market intelligence to diversity and inclusion strategies meaning that our client had the utmost confidence in the selection of candidates they appointed.

The Outcome – Our client was able to appoint two highly impactful candidates to their executive leadership team who are now responsible for defining and delivering the future of their insurance software business. Both candidates have been on this journey previously, both within insurance and other industries, so they bring a deep awareness of how to successfully navigate the complex journey to SaaS throughout the process.