Meet Dan Ebzery, our Chief Experience Officer and resident Group Insurance guru
• 3 min read
This month, we celebrate the 1 year anniversary of Dan’s appointment at AGI. We sat down with Dan in Sydney to learn more about his insights into AGI and the group insurance space.
Why did you join AGI in July 2019? What drew you to the company?
After spending the past 15 years working in a corporate environment I felt it was time for a change and to challenge myself in a new setting. I have always been passionate about the Corporate - Employee Benefits market and wanted to remain within the industry, and to continue to work closely with the broker and insurer relationships I had established over the years, albeit with a different focus and within a smaller niche organisation. I could see that AGI would provide me with this opportunity and importantly the chance to work within a trusted business that has led the way in this industry with improving the service capability and customer experience for its business partners.
What do you do at AGI & what do you enjoy most about your role?
I joined AGI as their Chief Experience Officer, a newly created role designed to build on the brand and profile of the business, whilst continuing to enhance capability and expand on our partnerships and new market opportunities. Our aim is to be the pre-eminent provider of group risk administration services to the insurance and superannuation industry in Australia.
What I enjoy most about my role is the opportunity to work within a dynamic business that truly supports each other to achieve our goals.
What were your initial impressions of the business, team, people, culture, environment?
Having worked closely with the AGI business over the years I had a good sense of how knowledgeable, talented and professional the team were, and I haven’t been disappointed. The key driver in everything we do at AGI is our people. Our team is made up of a diverse range of cultures who truly care about each other, there is a real sense of respect and integrity in everything they do that makes this place great.
What are your thoughts on AGI’s current strategic partnerships?
AGI are very proud of our long term partnerships with both AIA and MetLife. Both organisations are trusted global brands and continue to lead the way for insurers in the Australian market. We feel privileged to work with these organisations as we look to find ways to evolve and innovate with new product and service solutions for our mutual clients.
What do you see are the most significant achievements of the business over the past 12 months?
It's been pleasing to see the progress we have made over the past 12 months; we have continued to expand on our key partnerships with both MetLife and AIA, and have also lifted our profile and the support services for the brokers we are servicing in the market. To support our growth we have importantly continued to invest in our people and capability, with 6 (check this?) new hires joining us over the past 12 months, and already contributing strongly to our business.
Another important achievement for the business was obtaining our ISO global accreditation, this was an important milestone and has provided our clients with an increased level of comfort with AGI’s IT security and risk management framework for handling sensitive data.
Where do you see AGI headed in the next 12 months and what changes do you anticipate?
For AGI our focus is very much about growth; through maximising our existing insurer partnerships, and seeking new market opportunities. By leveraging our inhouse IT capability we see a real opportunity to develop tailored online solutions for the group insurance market, making access to insurance products simpler to understand and easier to transact, importantly supported by a responsive and seamless service model.
Brokers continue to see AGI as their go to third party administrator (TPA), and we want to continue to evolve our model to develop a full suite of online support services to assist them grow and maintain their portfolios.
As we continue to explore new market opportunities we intend to expand on our presence in both the superannuation and general insurance markets. We see a real opportunity to leverage our capability to assist these markets with lifting the standards when it comes to managing sensitive data and servicing their employer based clients.
We also have some exciting developments ahead for our SMSF platform. We are about to launch a brand new website with enhanced capability which provides a complete end to end online experience, from quote to application to binding cover, including real time medical underwriting and reflexive questioning, making it easier than ever for the SMSF market to obtain voluntary life products.
Thank you very much for your reflections and insights, Dan.
It’s a pleasure.