In 2021, insurer and financial services company Nationwide reported the strongest earnings in the Fortune 100 company’s history — $2.8 billion in operating income with sales of over $50 billion, another record number.
What wasn’t immediately apparent in a late-February media statement announcing those results was the contribution of property/casualty operations to those numbers — roughly $1 billion in profit, $19 billion in P/C premiums and a 5-point improvement in the combined ratio over the prior year.
In mid-April, Mark Berven, the president and chief operating officer of Nationwide Property and Casualty, shared the P/C figures with Carrier Management, Insurance Journal’s sister publication, and described the future-focused transformations of both Nationwide’s personal and commercial lines operations that started seven years ago, propelling the businesses to their new heights in 2021.
“We really began an effort around investing in the future in the mid-2010s. So, 2015, 2016, we started making massive investments for what we thought the future of our businesses would need,” Berven said. “It was really placing bets around modernizing our technology and creating a platform to innovate off of … We also felt as if that would give us a chance to review all of our processes and products, rationalize in order to meet customer needs but figure out a way that we could drive improved efficiency and better customer experience through all parts of the value chain.”
He continued: “It really began a mindset shift for the organization around what we thought the future would bring. And that’s coming to fruition with digitization of business models, working in a new kind of agile model, constantly testing ourselves to rethink what’s possible.
“And a big part of that effort, though, was about investing in our workforce,” he added. “We started a Future of Work program that was provided to all Nationwiders really with a focus on reskilling, upskilling and providing the capabilities that would be needed to compete as we continue to move forward with a better understanding by our workforce of what does it mean to drive a digital operating model and how do we utilize agile planning processes versus kind of the historical way that planning would take place.”
Said Berven, “That really has contributed to expense ratio improvements but also better customer experiences for our distribution partners as well as the end consumer.”
Included in the efforts on the commercial side were investments in new platforms to make small business easier for agents and brokers to place, moves to develop specialties in distinct sectors of the middle market, and even leaps into the world of reinsurance and global account business.
Along the way, Nationwide spent roughly $750 million in technology investments and in 2020 made a five-year, $160 million investment in talent, equipping associates with digital literacy and future capabilities training. During an hour-long phone interview, Berven described all the changes and advanced the idea that Nationwide’s structure as a mutual allowed the company to move earlier than peers.