Insurance Business Best Service Provider Excellence Award 2020

Insurance Asia Awards Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative of the Year 2020

Insurance Business 5-Star Insurance Innovator 2021

Accolades

Media

Engaging with a future of opportunities

In March, Pete Nicholson moved into the role of CEO at Gallagher Bassett, Australia’s largest third party claims administrator. He sees the coming months as a transformative time for GB and the insurance industry at large. “We're really excited about what lies ahead for the next 12 to 24 months and beyond,” he says. After two really challenging years of COVID-19, Nicholson says the insurance industry can hold its head high. “I think we can be really proud about how we've pulled together and got through, and it looks now like there are great opportunities.” In fact, he says the experience of the pandemic helped improve something “that's critically important” to his company.

“The one thing that really stands out in our business as a consequence of what we've been through is the ability to proactively support mentally healthy workplaces,” says Nicholson. The CEO says GB’s mental health hub is supporting its employees and clients and helping to make sure it gets timely treatment to the right people. “We’ve seen a real growth in telehealth solutions born out of necessity through the pandemic but that are now really popular and proven to be really effective,” he says. He expects this growth to allow GB to “reimagine” return-to-work possibilities and help get people back to work faster. People front of mind Nicholson joined GB in 2017 after a decade working across Europe, America and Asia. He says this international experience taught him the importance of having diverse voices in any decision-making. “I think you invariably get better solutions, you're more creative and better able to problem-solve through having differences,” he says.

Today those decisions involve engaging with customers in an omnichannel digital environment, including by email, text, website chatbots and other artificially intelligent interactions. One area that GB is “really focused” on, says Nicholson, is sentiment analysis. “We've got data from thousands and thousands of claims to help provide real-time coaching to our folk around the meaning of tone silences and the word choices of customers to really help our people drive better outcomes,” he says.

Tools for better decision-making Nicholson says GB’s clients are also making significant digital progress. “We've seen from a range of our clients a real desire to invest in their digital channel strategy just to simplify their claims journey, drawing on a range of different data sources, robotics and greater integration with supply chains,” he says. However, GB’s CEO says it’s always important to remember the human element. Nicholson is a strong advocate for using technology to provide a more human approach. “It’s somewhat paradoxical, but with all the speed and the need for clients and customers to have instantaneous information, particularly in their times of need, we're seeing them want to speak to a human and have that empathetic voice on the phone to help them get through those tricky times,” he says.

GB is using technology to create capacity so skilled case workers can spend less time on repetitive administrative tasks and more on driving better claims outcomes. Nicholson says one example is the automation of payments or lodgements. He says GB is also investing heavily in decision support tools – “for example, the use of biopsychosocial factors to drive holistic claims management and better return outcomes for injured workers”. These factors use rich data sets to help employees take the best course of action for a customer during their claims journey. “We’ve built really deep expertise, including specialisation by injury type. That allows us to adopt a tailored approach, which gets consistently better return-to-work outcomes,” says Nicholson. Early intervention Another area GB is becoming more heavily involved in is preventative health apps. “We're really passionate about prevention at Gallagher Bassett and making sure that we use every tool that we possibly can to make the workplace or the community more healthy,” says Nicholson. GB is also using more predicative analytics to allow for a greater focus on early intervention that can also stop costs ballooning unnecessarily. “Early intervention is absolutely key here, and it's something that we measure ourselves on relentlessly. We have KPIs from our clients and partners, but ours are often much more aggressive,” Nicholson says. Part of this early intervention involves requiring employees to establish communication with a claimant within two days. “We invariably see better results when that connection and understanding is established straight out of the gate,” he says. GB’s drive towards these improvements in the claims space is focused on achieving better outcomes for all stakeholders, including injured workers and insurance companies, Nicholson says. “At Gallagher Bassett we really believe that a collaborative person-centred, holistic and tailored approach to claims management drives the best outcomes for all stakeholders.” Nicholson says many of GB’s partners are “absolutely in lockstep” with this approach. “They understand that a focus on returning to health and work is the best solution for everyone involved, be it the insurer, the government scheme and certainly the injured worker themselves.”

Spotlight

Nicholson is a strong advocate of the need to focus on people – both employees and customers. He learned this lesson as a CFO involved in mergers and acquisitions both in Australia and overseas. “There was always that real need to understand your customer, what they were driving towards, how you can best assist them and how you can best present compelling arguments through numbers, through financials, whilst not forgetting the human part of business,” he explains. For Nicholson, this underlines that for a service business like GB, people are the most important asset. “Every business decision needs to be made with people very much at the forefront of my mind, and it's something that I religiously adhere to,” he says.

As Australia’s largest and most trusted multiline third party claims administrator (TPA), Gallagher Bassett provides a complete range of claims management and consulting solutions, including workers’ compensation, general insurance, self-insurance and advisory services. Drawing on its global network and extensive local resources, it provides customised claim and risk mitigation solutions that improve its clients’ outcomes. GB introduced the TPA model to the local insurance industry. As pioneers in this fast-growing sector, the company continues to set the benchmark for quality, customer service and TPA systems across all insurance sectors. GB’s story is one of innovation, commitment to quality and strategic decision-making. Through its parent company, GB is acknowledged as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute, winning the award in 2022 for the 11th year in a row.

Company Profile

1,000

Insurance specialists

60,000

Claims managed per year

>14,000

People helped to return to work safely

>52,000

Australian organisations supported

1997

Year founded in Australia and New Zealand

Bio

Spotlight

Milestones

Media

Accolades

Company Profile

Years in the industry

>20 years’ experience across finance, operations and strategy

Tenure at current position

2017 - Present

Fast Facts

To Nicholson, GB feels like a family with welcoming and genuine people at all levels of the company The proud Tasmanian worked in Europe, the US and Asia for a decade and now lives in Brisbane

Pete Nicholson

CEO at Gallagher Bassett

Gallagher Bassett Australia’s CEO, Pete Nicholson, sees big opportunities ahead. With COVID-19 in retreat, Australia opening up and digital transformation in the claims area, GB’s new leader is raring to embrace change and implement ideas

Read on

“At Gallagher Bassett we really believe that a collaborative, person-centred, holistic and tailored approach to claims management drives the best outcomes for all stakeholders”

Pete Nicholson, Gallagher Bassett

“Every business decision needs to be made with people very much at the forefront of my mind, and it’s something that I religiously adhere to”

Pete Nicholson, Gallagher Bassett

IN Partnership with

HRD Australia 5-Star Employer of Choice 2022

One of Ethisphere Institute’s World’s Most Ethical Companies 2011-2022

Australian organisations supported

Key Media

Insurance Business America

Insurance Business Canada

Wealth Professional Canada

People

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About us

RSS

Asia

SPECIALTY

BEST INSURANCE

RESOURCES

RISK MANAGEMENT

FEATURES

NEWS

2012

2015

2017

2018

2021

2022

Pete Nicholson returns to Australia after almost a decade leading financial services organisations across Europe and North America

2012

Completes Senior Leadership Development Program at the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland

2015

Joins Gallagher Bassett as CFO – Australia. Supports establishment of Gallagher Bassett in the NT, providing workers’ compensation services to NT government agencies

2017

Supports the establishment of Gallagher Bassett in Tasmania – GB now has an office in every state and territory Australia-wide. Nicholson promoted to CFO for GB International, leading Mergers and Acquisitions International

2018

GB celebrates 10 years of recognition as a World’s Most Ethical Company. Also named one of Australia’s most innovative insurance companies by Insurance Business in recognition of its COVID-19 response task force

2021

Nicholson appointed CEO of Gallagher Bassett Australia. Leads the celebration of GB’s 20-year anniversary as a Workers’ Compensation Agent for WorkSafe Victoria. GB’s Gentle Bear CSR program celebrates its 15-year anniversary – more than 15,000 teddies have been donated to law enforcement agencies worldwide

2022

Milestones