From canceled once-in-a-lifetime vacations to bringing home a furry new family member, the COVID-19 pandemic presented an unprecedented need for Aon to protect what matters most. At Aon Affinity, this meant diving deep into the shifting needs of consumer clients and providing products and solutions when they were needed most. On this episode of “On Aon,” host Sheena Singh, Senior Vice President for Aon’s National Healthcare Industry Vertical in Health Solutions, is joined by Christina Hopper, President of the Consumer Solutions Group within Aon Affinity, for a conversation about consumer trends over the past two years. They cover pets, travel, TikTok, pandemic parenting, shifting to a remote work environment, weddings—and the coverage Aon offers consumers through Aon Affinity.
From canceled once-in-a-lifetime vacations to bringing home a furry new family member, the COVID-19 pandemic presented an unprecedented need for Aon to protect what matters most. At Aon Affinity, this meant diving deep into the shifting needs of consumer clients and providing products and solutions when they were needed most. On this episode of “On Aon,” host Sheena Singh, Senior Vice President for Aon’s National Healthcare Industry Vertical in Health Solutions, is joined by Christina Hopper, President of the Consumer Solutions Group within Aon Affinity, for a conversation about consumer trends over the past two years. They cover pets, travel, TikTok, pandemic parenting, shifting to a remote work environment, weddings—and the coverage Aon offers consumers through Aon Affinity.
Additional Resources:
Interview: Beth Godlin, President of Aon Affinity’s Travel Practice
Tweetables:
“We have to get very deep and specialized into the industries that we support.” — Christina Hopper
“We think deeply about the industries and our customers and then we build the products they need.” — Christina Hopper
“It’s clear that people want to protect what they cherish.” — Christina Hopper
“COVID-19 was a lesson in not knowing what we didn’t know, but knowing we want to be protected when that next thing happens.” — Christina Hopper
Voiceover:
Welcome to On Aon, a podcast featuring conversations between colleagues on, well, Aon. This week, we hear from Christina Hopper about consumer trends and coverage through Aon Affinity. And now, this week's host, Sheena Singh.
Sheena Singh:
Hi, everyone. My name is Sheena Singh. I've been a colleague at Aon for five years. I'm a senior vice president for Aon's national health care industry vertical in the health solutions practice, and I'm excited to be back “On Aon.” With me today, I'm really excited to have Christina Hopper. She's been at Aon for over 24 years [and] currently serves as president of the consumer solutions group for Aon Affinity. Thanks for being here today, Christina.
Christina Hopper:
Thanks for having me.
Sheena Singh:
Well, let's get started with a warm-up question before we learn more about Aon Affinity. So since you've been at Aon for over 24 years, I'd love for you to share, especially with our newer colleagues, what's one piece of career advice you'd give yourself if you were just entering the workplace today?
Christina Hopper:
Good question. I think with the benefit of an extremely long career, when I look back on it, you could arguably say it's been a random walk for me both before I joined Aon and afterwards. But if I think about it more holistically, I see a pattern, right? I think where I've advanced my career has always started with doing what interests me but keeping an eye on going where I'm needed. So when you see challenges in your organization or for your clients or for your industry and they seem urgent, I would say, raise your hand. It almost always increases your skills, increases your network, your experience base, and ultimately, your recognition and your forward career movement. So you have to balance what is fascinating and what is necessary. And I think the two of those together, I think now with the benefit of hindsight, served me pretty well.
Sheena Singh:
Yeah, I think that's great advice. It definitely resonates with me. You’ve got to get your hands dirty and get involved in a lot of different types of projects, I think, at the end of the day to really see what you even want to do in the future and grow your professional career. So I think that's definitely great advice for our newer colleagues and probably others who have been in the business for a while too.
Sheena Singh:
So Christina, as you can imagine, Aon has a lot of services and products that they offer. I'm always learning about something new that Aon is in the business of. So I think for the benefit of our listeners, it would be great to tell us a little bit more about what is Aon Affinity and tell us more about the services and the products and ultimately, the clients that you serve.
Christina Hopper:
Sure. And I lead our consumer solutions group at Affinity but, holistically, all of Affinity is really a group of professionals that specialize in industries and clients. So we're trying to connect with customers and sponsors with the right product at the right time when they need it and in the right way with the right customer experience. And so, to do that, we have to get very deep and specialized into the industries that we support. So for example, our people who work in our travel insurance practice are as knowledgeable about the travel industry, airlines and its distribution, cruise lines, et cetera, as they are about insurance. And it's the marriage of that industry specialization with the insurance expertise that, frankly, I think Affinity delivers very much across the board. In the consumer solutions group, we offer coverages for the things that are important to people.
Christina Hopper:
So travel insurance, wedding insurance, more farther field, pet insurance. Also, if you think about it, professional liability. So for healthcare workers, for nurses and doctors and counselors, we offer the liability insurance for them that they can purchase to protect their profession and, generally, their livelihood. So our consumer solutions businesses serve the underbanked with products that other people might be able to get from their employer or from their credit cards that that segment isn't able to get. So we think deeply about the industries and the customers, and then we build products that they need.
Sheena Singh:
Yeah. That's great. I think that's a great way to explain it as well. And if there's one thing I can agree on is industry expertise and the marriage to the insurance expertise is critical especially as I work in the healthcare industry vertical. I think that's so critical to us for retaining clients and growing our business as well, for sure. So you've talked a little bit about some of the industries that you serve from a consumer solutions perspective. Obviously, I think the elephant in the room is that COVID-19, I'm sure, has impacted a lot of what you think about in terms of protecting those industries and the products that they ultimately need. Can you talk a little bit more about some of the changing needs that you've seen with your industries or clients that you serve?
Christina Hopper:
Oh, sure. I mean, it's been a fun 18 months, but it has been also very interesting because the impacts in each of our consumer solutions business were very different. So the most obvious example would be in our travel business where we had customers who all of a sudden could not go on their vacations and had coverages through our sponsors, through our programs. They all needed help urgently from their perspective because they had planned this wonderful family experience and they couldn't go. And so, we spent the first parts of COVID-19 really dealing with unbelievable volumes and trying to help customers at the moment of truth for the product. That changed over time to helping our industry figure out how to get back to traveling safely and securely with different new products, products that specifically address COVID-19, processes that help them think about how they could increase demand and make customers feel more secure as they were thinking about starting to hit the road again.
Christina Hopper:
And now, it's a little bit more about Delta, right? So now, we're navigating together with clients and customers. What does the Delta variant mean in terms of demand, in terms of people's desire to travel and their ability to travel safely? So it's been really a series of events that have occurred over that time, but I've had other businesses where it's an entirely different dynamic at play. So healthcare would be another example. In healthcare, there was an amazing amount of activity where people could focus only on helping people in the hospital, nurses, counselors, physicians, any healthcare professional, pharmacists, they were all dealing with COVID-19. But shortly thereafter, we started bringing in the profession, started bringing people out of retirement to help, and those people needed to think about where's my liability coverage.
Christina Hopper:
Then, we had to stand up. The healthcare industry stood up a national vaccination program at multiple points of distribution. Again, people needed to think about, and pharmacists, for example, what does their liability coverage look like? And so, they were turning to us. Even counselors who were kept very busy by the close and intimate family relationships that were going on in shelter in place, counselors had to pivot on a dime to a telemedicine approach. That was a little bit different than what they were doing and they perceived a need for more protection as a result. So different events, different impacts.
Sheena Singh:
Well, yeah. I mean, that's a really great summary or recap of the fact that you had to be nimble with what you're serving to your clients ultimately because they were anticipating all different types of circumstances. And I think that that's really what's critical here is understanding what those needs are in that moment, but also anticipating what are they going to need in the future based on the changing needs in the rapidly changing environment.
Sheena Singh:
I'm sure it was a journey over the last 18 months of, okay, what are we doing next to make sure that all of these industries are getting the protection that they ultimately need from a consumer perspective. So I thank you for all of that update in terms of your approach to it. You did mention earlier and I think this goes back to a pandemic trend that we saw related to pets. I know that from my experience working with healthcare organizations, they love pet insurance. So I want to talk a little bit more about, obviously, how you guys serve the consumer perspective around pet insurance and sort of what were the trends you were seeing there.
Christina Hopper:
Yeah, and it's a classic example referring back to our last discussion. Here's what we thought was going to happen, but here's how agile we needed to be when it turned out that it was a little bit different. So we initially thought about our pet parents - and we offer pet health insurance, generally speaking, to protect families from having to make hard financial decisions about their furry family member. You never want to not be able to treat a pet for an accident or illness because of costs and that's really what pet insurance delivers for customers. And so, we thought though, people's finances were going to be tighter, they were going to have to draw in and think about where they spent, and that they would potentially not continue their coverage.
Christina Hopper:
In fact, what ended up happening was that people continued their coverage and we now know it's because if their finances were not as clear and they didn't have a good view of what they were going to look like, they did not want to have to make that decision. And they were more worried about a catastrophic loss, not worried about a monthly premium, but worried about having to lose a family member because they couldn't afford it. So they retain the coverage, but on top of that then, people were home and they decided to add a furry family member, right? And that was entirely unexpected, I think, by the industry. But quickly, we all realized that people wanted to add to their families. And so, we ended up having a tremendous number of new puppies. So pandemic puppy was really real and cats, I don't want to offend our cat folk, but I think puppies are a little more labor intensive. So that tended to be what people went with when they were sheltering in place.
Sheena Singh:
Yeah, and Christina, I think you hit on a great point there and that I don't think necessarily people think about all of their insurance needs proactively, right? Of what are they going to need to protect themselves in the future for changing circumstances and changing external environments that they can't really necessarily anticipate. But it sounds like you would think, because of the financial impact, they would be less likely to buy insurance, but it's actually the opposite because they want to ultimately protect their investment, whether that's a pet or it's their wedding or it's travel. I think, ultimately, I think that's a really great takeaway from this, it's that we need to invest upfront so that we can actually protect the thing that we want in the long-term to be ultimately valuable to us and make sure that we get a chance to preserve it. So I think that that's a really good takeaway from some of the sort of trends that you're seeing related to this industry.
Christina Hopper:
Yeah. I mean, I think when the circle got drawn tighter for people, when they pulled in while we dealt with COVID-19, they focused on what was really important to them and we always knew people wanted to protect themselves and protect their investment. But what was clear is that they wanted to protect what they cherish, time with their family, their ability to provide for their family through their profession, their ability to have a warm home and include an animal companion in it, their ability to travel, to see family and friends. Those are things that people always knew they valued, but I think during COVID-19 they cherished it and I think that's why we resonated and that's why the value proposition in the various products resonated with people so deeply even during COVID-19.
Sheena Singh:
Yeah. That's a great point. So in terms of the industries that you do work with, tell us a little bit more about what you think was impacted the most and why, and which one do you think will recover the quickest?
Christina Hopper:
Well, some never really had to recover, which was surprising. Example, pets as we just talked about. It really never needed to recover because it actually got a tailwind, pardon the pun, from the pandemic puppy situation. On the other hand, travel was and still is challenging. And then in the middle, I think there's a lot of our businesses, whether it's our underbanked segment or our debt cancellation support business where people were enrolled in credit card programs that protected them if they couldn't pay their balance.
Christina Hopper:
Initially, we had a number of people who lost their jobs during COVID-19 but it was a great opportunity for us to serve them at the moment of need and to validate the value proposition of that product for them. And fundamentally, you do see people who are being more prudent with what they spend. So perhaps those businesses are not growing the way they would, but really it's been a mixed bag because it's really specific to what the customer is thinking and what was going on with COVID-19 during a particular time period because we've had about 25 different phases of COVID-19 as far as I can count.
Sheena Singh:
Yeah, and there's more coming, I'm sure.
Christina Hopper:
Exactly.
Sheena Singh:
So with all that being said, especially everything that's happened over the last 18 months, what do you think is a trend emerging from all of this that you think is here to stay?
Christina Hopper:
I think I mentioned that people think about risk differently now. I think if we go pre-COVID-19, risk was, what am I worried about in my personal domain that I cannot control? And that leads to sort of a narrow view of where and when and what type of protection might be necessary. And I think the trend now is that people think much more broadly about external risk factors that they don't know what they don't know. And I think COVID-19 was a lesson in not knowing what we didn't know, but I know I don't want to have to be unprotected if that next thing happens. So I think that trend is definitively here to stay at least for a number of years, not dissimilar to large-scale events that changed people's perception of risk. This one is a doozy. So I think people have a different shift on that.
Sheena Singh:
Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree. And I think that we're going to keep being nimble and agile in terms of the resources and the support that we provide to our clients ultimately. So it's an adventure. There's been a lot of consumer trends coming out of COVID-19 and also people taking on a lot of different types of hobbies. Some people baked banana bread, obviously, some people got new pets, they learn how to garden. I think I learned how to just sit still and not go out all the time and that was an interesting experience. But for you, what hobby or activity have you enjoyed over the last 18 months?
Christina Hopper:
So there's been a number of them and, actually, when I think about it, the thing that I've enjoyed most and maybe a function of a different perspective working from home, but the personal benefit I ended up getting out of COVID-19 wasn't actually a new hobby. We certainly pursued probably everything my daughter saw on TikTok, but it was the fact that I actually got to spend a lot of time...I have two teenagers. So this is normally the time of life where they expand their circle, they disconnect, you don't see them, they're running around doing their activities. And the COVID-19 experience brought us closer and it brought me to a different vantage point and I'm able to see a lot more about how they're developing as people, what they're interested in, what their points of view are.
Christina Hopper:
So I'm getting to know them as people while they're turning into people. And I don't think I would have had that experience were it not for COVID-19. So I'm always looking for, I won't call them silver linings given what happened, but I will say there are benefits and that happened to be one for me. So I enjoy spending a tremendous amount of time with them.
Voiceover:
This has been a conversation On Aon and the impact of the pandemic on consumer trends and coverage. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this week's episode, tune in in two weeks for a discussion with Aon's chief medical officer. To learn more about Aon, its colleagues, solutions and news, check out our show notes and visit our website at aon.com.
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