The insurance industry’s transformation is reshaping the capabilities leaders need, placing greater emphasis on succession planning, people management and technology-led change.
Sunder Natrajan, Chief Human Resources Officer at IndiaFirst Life, says organisations must treat leadership readiness as a business priority rather than a development exercise reserved for senior employees.
“The worst time to start building a leader is when you suddenly need one,” Natrajan says, highlighting the need to prepare future leaders before critical roles become vacant.
In an interview with People Matters, he discusses why traditional career pathways need broader development, how middle managers influence transformation and why weak leadership pipelines can expose organisations to business risks.
Leadership readiness must keep pace with industry change
Insurance has become more digital, data-led and regulated, while customer expectations and emerging risks have increased the demands placed on leaders. Natrajan believes traditional approaches to leadership development have not kept pace with these changes.
“The insurance industry has changed materially over the last decade. It is more digital, more data-led, more regulated, more customer-conscious and more exposed to new forms of risk.”
He says leadership readiness was often treated as a natural outcome of tenure, functional performance or success in sales. The changing operating environment requires leaders to manage several priorities simultaneously, including distributed teams, AI-enabled models, regulatory scrutiny and evolving customer expectations.
For an industry built on long-term promises, Natrajan stresses the importance of maintaining trust while adopting new technologies and pursuing growth.
“Therefore, leaders must ensure that speed does not compromise suitability, automation does not dilute empathy, and growth does not come at the cost of governance.”
He sees leadership development as a continuous business discipline, supported by exposure, coaching, cross-functional learning and accountability, rather than an HR programme introduced only after employees reach senior positions.
Functional expertise needs a broader enterprise perspective
Sales, distribution and operations remain important routes into insurance leadership because they provide an understanding of customers, intermediaries and frontline execution. However, Natrajan believes strong functional performance alone no longer prepares leaders for the full scope of enterprise responsibilities.
“The best leaders don't abandon their experience. They learn how to transcend it.”
He says leaders must extend their existing expertise through digital fluency, data literacy, systems thinking and the ability to manage ambiguity. A sales leader, for instance, must understand customer suitability, digital adoption, conduct risk and the economics of sustainable growth.
“The shift is not from experience to technology; it is from narrow experience to broader relevance.”
For organisations, the implication is to develop existing talent rather than rely solely on credentials or conventional career progression. Natrajan places importance on curiosity, adaptability and a willingness to remain relevant as business requirements change.
Why middle managers need stronger development pathways
Middle managers occupy a critical position between business strategy and everyday execution. They translate organisational priorities into team behaviour, customer interactions and performance expectations, while managing operational responsibilities.
“Strategy may be decided at the top, but it is won or lost in the middle.”
Natrajan says organisations frequently overload this layer with business targets, customer escalations, compliance requirements, technology adoption and transformation responsibilities. Managers may not always receive sufficient time, authority or capability support to meet these competing demands.
He draws a parallel with cricket, where leadership is distributed across players rather than resting entirely with the captain. Similarly, organisations need managers who can guide colleagues, exercise judgement and respond to changing conditions.
A further challenge arises when companies promote high-performing individual contributors without adequately preparing them to lead people. Delivering personal targets and enabling an entire team to succeed require different capabilities.
Natrajan identifies coaching, feedback, delegation, conflict management, judgement and psychological safety as fundamental managerial skills. He recommends early identification of leadership potential, cross-functional assignments, field exposure, transformation projects and mentoring to build readiness.
He also calls for people development to become a visible component of managers’ performance scorecards.
AI will change leadership, not remove its human responsibilities
As AI and automation reshape workflows, Natrajan expects routine, repetitive and rules-based work to become increasingly automated. He believes this should allow leaders and teams to concentrate on problem-solving, customer conversations, innovation and relationship-building.
“AI and automation will change the nature of leadership more than they will eliminate the need for leadership.”
He identifies five capabilities that will become increasingly important:
Digital and data fluency: Understanding what data can reveal, recognising its limitations and knowing when human validation is necessary.
Judgement under ambiguity: Evaluating AI-generated recommendations against customer interests, organisational priorities and wider responsibilities.
Customer empathy: Maintaining trust while technology improves convenience and service delivery.
Ethical and risk-aware decision-making: Assessing whether AI applications are fair, explainable, secure and compliant.
Learning agility: Continuously learning, unlearning and helping colleagues adapt.
Natrajan also cautions against leadership styles built around rigid hierarchy, information control and the expectation that leaders must always have the answers. Human oversight remains important where AI decisions carry significant consequences.
Leadership blind spots can create business risks
Natrajan identifies several organisational blind spots that can weaken leadership effectiveness and succession planning. These include treating people issues as secondary concerns, confusing technology adoption with transformation and relying excessively on indicators that reveal problems only after they emerge.
“Leadership gaps, weak manager capability, poor succession depth, burnout, low trust and skills obsolescence can all become direct business risks.”
He says organisations need leading indicators across the employee lifecycle, including onboarding quality, early-tenure experience, manager effectiveness, internal mobility, skill progression, wellbeing signals and the relationship between training and performance.
Another concern is the tendency to treat succession planning as a confidential list of potential successors rather than an ongoing development process.
“Succession is not a spreadsheet. It is an ongoing system of identifying potential, creating readiness, giving people exposure and testing them through meaningful roles.”
For Natrajan, effective succession planning requires organisations to assess readiness continuously and provide employees with opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities before they assume critical responsibilities.
Preparing insurance leaders for the next five years
Natrajan expects successful insurance leaders to combine digital fluency, human understanding, risk awareness and adaptability. They will need to use data intelligently while retaining the judgement to challenge recommendations when customer interests, fairness or ethics require it.
He also advocates broader approaches to identifying leadership potential, including talent from field roles, service teams, operations, technology, partner ecosystems and diverse geographies.
Organisations, he says, should begin by treating leadership and succession as priorities for enterprise risk management and business continuity. They should establish future-focused capability frameworks, strengthen middle-management pipelines and connect learning with practical assignments.
He also recommends measuring pipeline health through indicators such as readiness for critical roles, internal mobility, successor diversity, manager effectiveness and the retention of high-potential talent.
“Ultimately, the leaders who will stand out will not be those who merely manage disruption. They will be those who turn disruption into confidence for customers, employees, partners and the organisation.”
