In 2021, Jillian Slyfield was appointed Aon’s Chief Innovation Officer to further build the firm’s Innovation at Scale strategy and help address growing unmet client needs around increased volatility, access to capital, underserved markets and resilient workforces. Today, she’s reflecting on her time in the role so far and how innovation continues to be a core component of the Aon United Blueprint. This week’s host, Aon Senior Vice President, Health Solutions, Joey Raheb is joined by Jillian for a conversation highlighting the ways that the firm is working to overcome the challenges of a volatile global market and what the future of innovation at Aon looks like.
In 2021, Jillian Slyfield was appointed Aon’s Chief Innovation Officer to further build the firm’s Innovation at Scale strategy and help address growing unmet client needs around increased volatility, access to capital, underserved markets and resilient workforces. Today, she’s reflecting on her time in the role so far and how innovation continues to be a core component of the Aon United Blueprint.
This week’s host, Aon Senior Vice President, Health Solutions, Joey Raheb is joined by Jillian for a conversation highlighting the ways that the firm is working to overcome the challenges of a volatile global market and what the future of innovation at Aon looks like.
Additional Resources:
Aon appoints Jillian Slyfield as Chief Innovation Officer
Silicon Republic: Aon’s chief innovation officer wants to tackle ‘complex’ challenges with tech
Jillian recently spoke at Future Human. Silicon Republic shared highlights from session.
Tweetables:
“We’ve really established this track record of capabilities and solutions inside of Aon.” — Jillian Slyfield
“There’s no shortage of great ideas at Aon.” — Jillian Slyfield
“The volatility in our market and what’s happening in the world today requires all hands on deck.” — Jillian Slyfield
“Innovation is more relevant now than ever before.” — Jillian Slyfield
Voiceover:
Welcome to “On Aon,” a podcast featuring conversations between colleagues on, well, Aon. This week, we hear from Jillian Slyfield, Aon’s Chief Innovation Officer, about innovation at Aon. And now, this week’s host, Joey Raheb.
Joey Raheb:
Hi everybody. My name is Joey Raheb, and I've been a colleague at Aon for about seven years. I currently serve as senior vice president in our Canadian health solutions practice leading growth for our practice nationally. Today, I'm really excited to be joined by Jillian Slyfield as our special guest. She joined Aon in 2015 and was recently named our chief innovation officer in November. Welcome, Jillian.
Jillian Slyfield:
Hi, Joey. Thanks for having me. I'm so glad to be here.
Joey Raheb:
Great. It's nice to meet you. So as we get started, we usually start with a softball type question. So maybe I'll start by asking you how you got your career started here at Aon.
Jillian Slyfield:
Yeah, thanks for asking. Like you said, I joined Aon in 2015 and then most recently served as Aon's digital economy practice leader. And in that role, we've focused on the digital disruption that clients are facing and the new risk issues that come out of that. So they are clients who have either derived exclusively out of the digital world, or maybe even more importantly, clients who've had a change in their risk profile due to digital capabilities. And so in some cases that was on-demand economy. It could have been mobility as a service, future of work, platform marketplaces, anything that created a disruption. And so we formed a practice really to develop a unique value proposition that resonated with those clients who were asking the insurance industry really to respond in an agile way to constantly evolving client needs.
Jillian Slyfield:
And so what I learned from that was that there's really a value to a minimum viable product for clients in this space who are saying we need you to respond today in a certain way, and that might change over time. And so I think in an industry and frankly, even for myself, where you're used to creating something that's perfect each time on behalf of your client, or certainly you want to get as close as possible to perfect, in this new business, it's around helping clients facilitate their business in the moment, and then looking to the future on how to build something better, stronger, and more efficient over time. And so there's a real humility in that when you're building solutions with that mindset.
Joey Raheb:
That's amazing, Jillian. And you know what? This is my third time doing a podcast. And what I really love about these podcasts is every single time I do it, I learn something new. And I didn't know that role or those capabilities even existed within Aon. So thanks for sharing that. The CIO role, the chief innovation officer role is also really exciting and focused on innovation. Can you tell us a little bit about first how you're liking the role? You've been in it for several months now. And what you've learned in it so far.
Jillian Slyfield:
Well, I feel so privileged truly because I keep saying this to people, which is, I thought I had the best job in the company when I led digital economy. Now, I feel like I have the best job in the company leading innovation. And I think the reason I feel that way is because in both roles, we're building on behalf of clients and creating something new. So I'm thrilled both [inaudible 00:03:29] just the opportunity to be in the role and for everything that represents for the company and the team. So when I look at it, it's like we've really established this track record of capabilities and solutions inside of Aon. We have a very entrepreneurial mindset and culture to begin with. And then we're driven by our Aon United strategy, which bringing together all of our solutions, our geographies mindset that's different and unique in this industry.
Jillian Slyfield:
So leading innovation means I have the benefit of this groundwork that's been put into place and leading this strategy for breakaway growth. There's some pressure involved in that, but it's all upside and just an incredible amount of support. And when I look at what have I learned in here, there's no shortage of great ideas at Aon. And frankly, contrary to a lot of industry rhetoric, I see the insurance industry as being really fast-paced and innovative. And if we really look at new business and growth opportunities, insurance and reducing risk and creating opportunities for capital is really the single greatest facilitator of economic growth. So huge upside here.
Jillian Slyfield:
This isn't new, but it's just so fun and energizing to see a part of, which is there's a deep desire from our clients to collaborate on new solutions, to bring life to them. And so there's this enormous tolerance, and in fact, excitement around new products. And our clients have this willingness to be a part of product development journey. What we used to call disruption in the insurance industry... And I see that in inure tech and new products, both that our clients are building on their own and things that third parties are pulling together. It's not really disruptive anymore. It's really interesting. And so when I think about what am I learning, I'm also learning that it's so focused on collaboration that the disruptors and the insure techs are now working with brokers and large carriers on behalf of clients. Clients are participating. And so seeing everyone working together because the volatility in our market and what's happening in the world today just requires all hands on deck. So we can't go back to our corners, create something, throw it in the middle and hope that it's fixed. We've got to work together on it.
Jillian Slyfield:
And there's so much transition. So if I look at that volatility, I see transition across so many different areas of our economy, whether it's climate and sustainability transition or new mobility, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, or intellectual property as an asset class. There are so many opportunities there for us to take advantage of. There'll always be a next new innovation to be a part of. So when I look at it, honestly, I'm humbled by the colleague engagement and the support from our capacity partners, and honestly, this almost palpable energy to create new solutions that enable talent strategies and financial progress and new business models. It just feels like all upside.
Joey Raheb:
I mean, that's really exciting. I like that concept you're talking about, that the idea of disruptor doesn't exist anymore. Do you think that changes the dynamic of what innovation means in our context or at Aon?
Jillian Slyfield:
Oh, I absolutely do. I think like I said before, there's no shortage of good ideas. They're not all going to come from inside of Aon. They're going to come from our clients. They're going to come from inure tech. We just have to listen. But it also means that if we think about what our pool of resources is and we expand that view path just looking inside our own company, which of course has a tremendous strength to it on our own, but if we then say in order to accomplish that vision, if we want to get to that end goal on behalf of the client... I mean, think of climate. I mean, that's arguably the biggest risk issue of our lifetime. Are we better getting there by just looking internally at Aon, which has tremendous strength, or could we advance that and have breakaway growth by partnering with other data and analytics companies with clients, with banks and other organizations? Absolutely. So I think there's tremendous opportunity by just strengthening our view of what's possible through resources outside of Aon and partnership.
Joey Raheb:
Yeah. I mean, that's truly exciting. And I think you mentioned something in a response to the previous question around advisory firms being nimble and everybody doing their own thing, but now this concept of innovation at scale and how we take innovation and scale it to our business. Can you share a little bit more about what that is and how it's helping Aon address challenges for the industry?
Jillian Slyfield:
When I think about this, innovation is more relevant now than ever before. And what I mean by that is that the word that I keep thinking of is this volatile world. Our clients have this increasingly challenging economic environment to work in, and there's also so many more new technologies that are facing them that they have the opportunity to take advance stuff and grow, and we're more complex and interconnected than we ever were before. We're more global than we ever were before. So their needs continue to evolve. And frankly, they're outpacing innovation. And so there's a gap there for us to meet. And whether that's long-tail risks or any other kinds of capital requirements, we have this tremendous opportunity. So what are some of those challenges? So we've got this volatility. We can bring new solutions to reduce that risk inherent, if you will, in the transition, some of those areas that I mentioned before.
Jillian Slyfield:
Some of the solutions are going to need to be agile. Certainly they're going to be data-driven, and we need to think about data differently than we have in the past. And one of my commitments as part of our innovation at scale strategy is for them to all be tech-enabled. But I am so committed and believe so fully in the fact that tech enablement and data brings us closer to our clients because it gives us the data that we need to create the insight and puts us in a position of the strength of an advisor. So I think that's a really exciting piece. We also have to learn to underrate a little bit differently and broke differently because of this new data and because businesses are growing and the challenges are emerging today.
Jillian Slyfield:
And what I mean by that is there's a term that I use, which is we have more data around any point of a transaction in almost every business model than we ever had before. But they're different today than they were 10 years ago. So we don't have this what I would call long data. We don't have 10 years of consistent data over time because technology has changed to these businesses. So the 10 years ago data doesn't look anything like the reflection on the business today. But yet we have this very deep data. And so we've got to think differently about how we're building risk models around the data in the moment or in a shorter time span than we used to because we're so good at looking back to predict the future, and that's just not the world that we're in anymore.
Jillian Slyfield:
Other challenges that we're seeing is access to capital. We've got to think a little bit differently about how we're looking at capital and what we can bring to the table on behalf of clients. And clients too are thinking differently about this. One that we could have an entire podcast about, and I'm sure we will, is around resilient workforces. So smart working at Aon. All of our clients are facing talent strategy questions. And so how are we going to help address that need for a resilient workforce? What does the workforce need from us and from our clients? It's a really different answer today than it was even three years ago. So another challenge we've got to face.
Jillian Slyfield:
And then maybe one of the biggest and represents some of what we just talked about is the underserved sectors of the market. So are there geographies that are underserved? At Aon, one of the things that we're focused on is increasing our presence in both China and India. Are there whole segments of the market that are underserved or new business models that we haven't really put the energy of the insurance industry behind? Think about cryptocurrency as an example. What could that represent in the future? And then individual consumers. As people become more independent and less reliant on traditional business, their needs change. Gig workers have needs that look a little bit like commercial insurance and a little bit personal insurance. And at large, it's an industry challenge we just haven't taken on yet.
Joey Raheb:
I mean, that's a lot to get excited about. It sounds like you got a big journey ahead of you. When you think about all the things that exists as opportunities for you, I mean, what excites you the most about the future of innovation at Aon?
Jillian Slyfield:
Well, you can tell that I'm excited about it, but if I think about what excites me the most, I think in short, I would say we're ready. And what I mean by that is we're organized as a firm to be laser-focused on clients. Our DAU strategy, Delivering Aon United and how we've thought about that on behalf of our clients and our firm and our colleagues, frankly, positions us so well to take advantage of all those challenges I just mentioned. And we've got all of the resources, all of the talent that we need to take them on. We're also pretty disciplined and humble, and I think our vision is clear. That hasn't always been true, not just for Aon, but in the industry. There's just so many things to tackle, sometimes it's hard to know what to bring on first. But we're ready, and our leaders and our colleagues and our clients are ready for this. And so when I look at these opportunities, they're staggering, but they're all achievable, and that's what gets me fired up.
Joey Raheb:
Yeah. I mean, I guess I couldn't have said it better. In particular, I agree with the comment around the people and the mindset here. I think I've never seen the passion around delivering as an organization ever before. So DAU is truly finding its way in our culture. We're almost at time. So maybe I'll ask you another question just so that people can better know Jillian, and maybe a little bit more softer. Can you give us a tip that you might offer somebody who's looking to join Aon?
Jillian Slyfield:
Yeah. I mean, if you're a talented, driven, curious person, we'd love to have you. And I guess if I had a tip, I would say be bold. Introduce yourself to someone here. It's always great to submit your resume. But I would say make a connection, whether it's with me or with someone else who's at the firm, and be bold in your ambition, because we are a very inclusive organization. And like you said, we're executing on this strategy of Aon United, which is really focused on working collaboratively as a firm on behalf of clients. But when you're coming into the organization, I've seen us reward those who think bigger, think in a growth-oriented way.
Voiceover:
This has been a conversation “On Aon” and innovation at Aon. Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this week’s episode, tune in in two weeks for a discussion on employee retention and resilience. To learn more about Aon, its colleagues, solutions and news, check out our show notes, and visit our website at Aon dot com.