Storytelling and the insurance industry’s image problem

Every time there’s a disaster - wildfires, terrorism, oil spills - it’s the insurance and reinsurance industry that quietly puts the world back together. And yet, most people still think we’re the bad guys.

It’s frustrating, but not surprising. We’ve spent decades hiding our best work behind compliance jargon and corporate self-congratulation.

Where’s the story about claims?

It’s buried somewhere under the ‘Meet Our Team’ section and a generic line about ‘tailored solutions.’ I used to sit opposite the Head of Claims in an MGA and joke about the day we’d put claims stats and stories on the homepage of the website. To this day I still haven’t, and that says a lot.

Claims should be the story. It’s the proof. It’s the impact. It’s what we do. But instead of leading with what matters to the customer, we lead with ourselves.

How many times have you seen that weird sentence where it says we have a combined experience of 100 years…especially amusing when its cyber cover!

Where is the identification of the customer need?

I’ve lost count of the number of RFPs I’ve worked on where we drone on for 10 pages about our expertise and products before we even mention the client. When I’ve done digital RFPs that give analytics, it’s been no surprise that prospects jump straight to the 'our solution for you' and remuneration sections and ignore all our company information.

We shouldn’t be shouting about how great we are. We should be showing we understand the customer’s world, their risks, their goals, their pain points. It’s about relevance. And if you can’t nail that, don’t be surprised when your brand feels invisible, your talent pipeline dries up, and your web traffic bounces faster than a startup’s Series A budget.

This is exactly where Marketing steps in.

Not as a colouring-in department or a last-minute LinkedIn post machine, but as a strategic function that can reshape how the industry is understood. A well-executed promotional campaign, grounded in proper storytelling, could reframe the specialty insurance market for what it truly is: essential infrastructure for global industry and government. When we communicate the role we play in helping economies recover, keeping trade flowing, and supporting resilience in the face of catastrophe, we move from being a cost centre to a value driver. That’s not spin, that’s truth, finally told well.

We’ve seen glimpses of what good looks like. The London Makes It Possible campaign from LMG had the right idea (back in 2019 if memory serves) showing how this industry supports global progress, infrastructure and resilience. At the time, one of the goals of that campaign was for the rest of the industry to leverage the assets to help tell the story of the London Market. After years of trying, I had almost finished creating a version of the campaign when I was made redundant, so keep your eyes peeled for that from a broker who will remain nameless.

Who remembers the notebook, so good!

To be clear, there are a handful of brilliant companies out there telling the right stories, but let’s be honest, we could all do better.

But it can’t be fixed in isolation

The difficulty is, no single broker, or insurer can solve this alone. The insurance industry’s image problem is systemic. It needs to be tackled on a market-wide level. The task then falls to Lloyd’s or the various market associations, who are often underfunded and lack marketing resource.

Without market collaboration I don’t have a silver bullet for the image issue.

But if I did, my call to arms would be for all the industry heavy hitters to throw some cash into the mix then I’d be rolling out a global campaign tomorrow. But for now, I’ll keep chipping away, one project, one client at a time. Because in this day and age, when brand is finally a differentiator, my job isn’t just about selling insurance, it’s about reminding the world why insurance matters.

And that starts with telling better stories.

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This article was written as a response to Mairi Mallon's article Wildfires and Image Problems, https://www.soa.org/sections/reinsurance/reinsurance-newsletter/2025/june/rsn-2025-06-mallon/