The Future of Insurance Podcast – Jasmine Jirele

President & CEO, Allianz Life

Season 3, Episode 19, October 11, 2022

Guest Bio

Now. With more than 25 years in the financial services industry, Jasmine Jirele is the president and CEO of Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America (Allianz Life). She has broad experience in financial services strategy, marketing, product, and operations.

Then. Prior to becoming CEO in 2021, Jirele led the Growth and Marketing team where she was responsible for strategy, new markets, global business development, product innovation, marketing, digital and experience management, Allianz Ventures, strategic communications and sponsorships, and enterprise Agile. She also has previous experience as executive vice president at Wells Fargo.

And … Jirele holds a B.A. in business and journalism from the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) and an MBA from Hamline University (Minnesota). She is a Director of Allianz Australia Life Insurance Holdings and Allianz Australia Life Insurance Limited. She sits on the board at ACLI and is a member of the Steering Committee on Taxation and the Committee on Prudential Issues. Jirele is on the board of YMCA of the North and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, for which she is a member of the Corporate Investment & Development Committee and Technology & Operations Committee. She also sits on the board of the Minnesota Business Partnership and serves as an advisor for the Washburn Center for Children’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee. She is also a member of the Strategic Board of Advisors at University of St. Thomas’ Opus College of Business, and the LIMRA LOMA Global Board, for which she is a member of the Audit Committee and Membership Committee. She holds FINRA Series 7 and Series 24 securities registrations.

Highlights from the Show

  • Jasmine is the President & CEO of Allianz Life, the North American business of Allianz, focused on the future of retirement in this market
  • Jasmine’s background gave her experiences across functions within the business, which has been invaluable leading the organization overall
  • Being distributed through Financial Professionals primarily, that meant Allianz Life faced a major impact on how their business is sold during the pandemic
  • As you move more digital, how do you keep that proximity and relationship with customers but also take advantage of digital and remote to enable and deliver the content and exchange of information that was necessary during the pandemic
    • Some areas had already started to move to digital planning processes, like in the broker dealer space, but the final presentation to clients was still very much in person
    • Planning platforms have been around for a while, but insurance wasn’t part of them historically, which is now the case after insurers like Allianz saw the need to be part of the overall financial planning picture, which is going on digitally now
    • New things that came out of the pandemic include the growth of using electronic personal health information (PHI), which can facilitate the purchase of insurance products much easier
  • The big change from the pandemic is that people saw first hand the importance of life insurance and the protection it provides
  • The digitization of how relationships between financial professionals and their clients work together has allowed for the person-to-person interactions to be more purposeful and focused because people can take care of a lot of the logistics and paperwork digitally, remotely and asynchronously
  • The increase in digital interactions has actually resulted in more women seeking and getting access to financial advice, which is good as women have been underserved in this space
  • For Allianz’s people, there’s been a need to get savvy on digital tools quickly, and to be able to train financial professionals on them and work in a more hybrid manner with those advisors
  • Looking forward, Jasmine sees a few ways the Life and Annuities world will change, with a theme of being more holistic or complete
    • Planning will be more holistic, including more aspects of people’s wealth and financial decisions
    • She also sees health data coming into the equation more to tailor product coverage and pricing to be more relevant to individual customers
    • Health and Wealth are becoming more and more connected, so bringing together health management and wealth management into a more holistic picture will protect a lot more people
    • Fintechs will more fully reimagine the space rather than just tackling discrete pieces of the puzzle

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

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