Leaving a career I was familiar with to learn new skills, develop professionally and break down barriers, may have been daunting, but I can see how far I’ve come. Not only have I taken on new challenges in a different area at QBE, but I’ve also been promoted through the business and become an integral part of a close-knit team.
With the right attitude, some support and asking lots of questions, I overcame my initial doubts to take my career in a different direction. Accepting new challenges can seem like an unnecessary risk, but when the opportunity presents itself it can be worth it and QBE has been the right place for me to do it.
A big change
I’ve now been at QBE for nine years after working as an insurance auditor at KPMG and a financial planning analyst at Aon. I joined QBE as a finance manager, which was a big change from my previous roles, but it was time for me to have new challenges. At the beginning it wasn’t easy to move from the structured world of auditing, but my background did give me similar knowledge to some of the other underwriters.
Forging connections
Interactions with people on the team helped to ease my transition and forging the right relationships has facilitated my progress throughout QBE. I was encouraged by the company to make the career move, so I always knew I had their support and whenever I had doubts, there were always people available to explain the areas I didn’t fully understand.
An enthusiastic approach
My personal development was centred around learning on the job. Having an enthusiastic approach to the new challenges definitely made it work for me and I managed to learn in a number of different ways. This has led to me being promoted to portfolio manager for financial lines with a team of four reporting to me directly.
Be brave and don’t think too much
It was a lot of work changing career directions like I did at QBE, but I was well supported. If I was to give advice to other people thinking about doing a similar thing like I did, I’d tell them to be brave and not think too much about what could go wrong.
Most people know when they’re ready to take on a new challenge and the culture at QBE makes it a good place to take that step. QBE really cares about its people and this is especially the case with the Italian branch, where I’m based here in Milan. I have a nice team with lots of positive vibes and we work with people across Europe in a way that feels very unified.