Diary of an Insurer: Schemeserve’s James McNab

Monday

Who needs an alarm clock when you have a puppy. I’m up and about early to walk our 10-month-old dachshund. A good dose of fresh air to set me up for the week ahead.

I like to get an early start. So, after grabbing a coffee I make the short commute to my home office and set about my first task – planning and setting priorities for myself, my team, and my customers.

My job is multi-faceted – a mix of account management, build delivery, product development, and problem solving.

At 9.15am I join our daily team catch-up call, where we review actions from the previous day and collaborate to scope out activities moving forward.

This includes progressing current platform builds, new customer requirements, all things engineering to maintain the pace of innovation, integration projects, and growing the Schemeserve Network.

I then get on with the day’s work, which at the moment is a scheme build for a large MGA.

I jump on a call with the client to get feedback on progress, then focus on the hands-on technical work of building out question sets, underwriting guides, document, rating and bordereaux suites and so on, all the time collaborating with my fellow Wunderwriting team mates and UX designers.

I’m training for a five-day endurance running event in Lanzarote later this year, so at lunchtime I break up the day with a run.

Tuesday

After walking the dog, the first thing on the agenda is conducting interviews. As a fast-growing insurtech we have a number of new Wunderwriter roles to fill.

I then have calls with several new clients, who are taking advantage of our self-build functionality, to see how their schemes are progressing and if I can offer what we call ‘obsessive support’ – problem solving any issues they are facing, making any changes they need help with immediately, and ensuring they are constantly optimising use of all Schemeserve tools to build ‘beautiful’ quote journeys.

Today I am also working on an exciting new product feature and the associated roll out plan, including technical development work, marketing plans and customer communication strategies.

I end the day with a quick session on my Peloton.

Wednesday

Today is my rest day from training. But this doesn’t mean I drop the cadence when it comes to customer priorities.

At 10.30am I join our weekly sales and renewal call, where we discuss new projects, as well as expansion plans for our existing customers. I follow this up with a call to a start-up broker, launching with a digital-first strategy.

Having found that mainstream software houses are prohibitive due to huge upfront scheme build costs, this broker came to us thanks to our niche scheme model, revenue share approach, the level of control we offer, and back up support to get schemes from concept to go live very quickly.

I finish work in time for a dog walk, followed by a drink at the local pub with my running teammates.

Thursday

Always my favourite day of the week. After the routine activities of morning puppy walk and 9.15am team call, I join our weekly Product Pulse Zoom meeting.

A really collaborative call where we put our heads together on all of our current developments such as our accounting package Digit, scope out our software pipeline, and generally talk all things engineering.

11am is elevenses time. The whole team values this opportunity for some downtime and fun. It’s a chance to catch-up on all things non-work related and join one of the breakout rooms. This week’s options are a game of cards, art club, or a summer quiz. I join the quiz.

The evening is spent training with my running club.

Friday

I start the day off-site on a client visit. I love these opportunities to get closer to their business and really integrate myself within their team.

After heading home and feeding back actions to the rest of the team I enjoy a quick lunchtime run before embarking on my half day charity day; something every member of the Schemeserve team is entitled to. I volunteer at the Silverstone Museum every other Friday.

I end the week with a full team client project catch-up, and a spin on my Peloton.