Customer Movers and Shakers Q1 2025
30 April 2025
Donna Scully: Insurance Leadership, Claims and the Power of Opportunity
24 May 2025
Vicki Joshi, former Chief Customer Officer and Chief Brand Officer at AXA UK & Ireland, joins John Montgomery in The Impact Room to explore why customer experience in Insurance is no longer simply a service issue, it is a commercial one.
Drawing on more than 20 years in customer strategy, insight, financial services and insurance, Vicki discusses the connection between customer experience, brand, retention, accessibility and commercial performance; why insurers still leave value on the table; and how data, technology and AI are changing the way customers choose providers
Watch: Vicki Joshi in The Impact Room
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Customer Experience Is a Commercial Strategy
Vicki’s central argument is that customer centricity should not sit separately from commercial performance.
In Insurance, trust influences both acquisition and retention. Yet complexity, perceived lack of transparency, pricing changes and limited interaction between purchase and claim can make that trust difficult to build.
For Vicki, the opportunity is to connect customer, brand, operational and commercial measures rather than treating them as separate agendas.
That means understanding not simply whether an individual interaction went well, but how customer experience ultimately affects renewal behaviour, product holdings, lifetime value, operational efficiency and sales.
She advocates a balanced scorecard combining customer, brand, operational, people and commercial measures.
And critically, she talks about linking customer satisfaction and recommendation to actual purchasing and renewal behaviour, including customer lifetime value and multi-product holdings.
In this episode
- Customer experience as a driver of Insurance growth and retention
- The role of the Insurance Chief Customer Officer in commercial performance
- Connecting customer, brand, operational and commercial metrics
- Customer lifetime value, renewals and multi-product relationships
- Why accessible-by-design products create commercial opportunity
- Building trust throughout the insurance customer lifecycle
- Where digital journeys and human service need to meet
- Using data to understand customer behaviour and remove failure demand
- AI assistants and how they could change Insurance buying
- Why customer leadership needs a stronger voice in the boardroom
There is a particularly useful part where Vicki talks about businesses thinking customer, conduct and commercial agendas are competing priorities. Her “Golden Triangle” is essentially that if something is good for the customer, good for conduct and commercially sound, the organisation should deliberately design around all three.
The commercial opportunity: are insurers leaving money on the table?
One of the strongest themes in the conversation is the amount of commercial value that can be missed when customer strategy is treated as a service metric rather than a business strategy.
Vicki highlights accessibility as one example. She cites the “Purple Pound”, the collective spending power of disabled consumers and their families — at around £274 billion in 2024, arguing that organisations need to design products and services around a much broader spectrum of customer needs.
But the principle runs much further.
Poor journeys create repeat contact and failure demand. Weak customer understanding affects retention. Lack of trust affects acquisition. Poorly connected data prevents organisations from seeing what customers have already tried to do. And weak propositions can leave brands competing primarily on price.
That gives us a very strong line:
Customer experience is not simply about satisfaction. It influences revenue, retention, operational cost and customer lifetime value.
What CEOs, CCOs and Marketing Leaders should take from the conversation
Customer and commercial performance belong on the same scorecard.
Customer metrics are most useful when connected to renewals, sales, lifetime value, multi-product holdings and operational efficiency.
Retention starts long before renewal.
Insurers need to identify where they have permission to add value throughout the customer lifecycle rather than appearing only when the policy is purchased, claimed against or renewed. Vicki talks specifically about building longer-term relationships at the moments that matter.
Brand promise has to survive the customer journey.
A brand cannot claim to be customer-led if product design, service delivery, claims or digital experiences contradict that promise.
AI may completely change the discovery journey.
Vicki argues that AI assistants could increasingly mediate the relationship between customers and insurers, meaning insurers will need to articulate products, benefits and customer needs clearly enough for AI systems to understand and recommend them.
That last point is extremely timely for your AI discoverability work as well. I would absolutely link this episode later from that Resource Hub theme too.
Key quote
“If it’s good for our customers, it’s good for our conduct agenda and it’s good for our commercials.”
“Don’t ever be embarrassed about being the customer’s biggest cheerleader.”
About Vicki Joshi
Vicki Joshi is a senior customer and brand leader with more than 20 years’ experience spanning customer insight, strategy, financial services and insurance. Her career has included KPMG’s Insurance practice and, most recently, Chief Customer Officer and Chief Brand Officer at AXA UK & Ireland. She has worked across customer strategy, brand, operations and commercial performance, with a particular focus on translating customer insight into business outcomes.
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