EP 16 - From “Sold, Not Bought” to Listening First: What Clients Taught Me About Insurance
When I began my career in insurance, I was told something that defined much of the industry’s culture at the time: insurance is sold, not bought. At first, I accepted it. Later, I repeated it.
In this Episode:
Francois Jacquemin shares how shifting from “sold, not bought” to listening first changed his approach to insurance. This episode explores client-driven innovation, trust, and the pursuit of long-term value.
However, in practice, it led to mistakes and eventually to one of the most important lessons of my career.
The limits of conviction.
Early in my career, I was convinced that strong ideas and carefully designed products would succeed if executed with enough conviction. The reality was different. Products that looked perfect on the drawing board faltered in the market. Why? Because conviction alone cannot replace the client's perspective.
The shift to listening first.
The turning point was learning to build not from the top down, but from the bottom up. This did not mean abandoning vision. It meant subjecting that vision to the discipline of listening. Real listening, not collecting feedback and then deciding alone, but allowing the client's needs to shape the product in ways that were sometimes uncomfortable.
A good example came from a multinational program where we sought to stabilize pricing across countries. Clients valued long-term stability, but the insurers resisted anything beyond one-year commitments. Only when we included a three-year visibility clause did the product truly work. It required effort, persuasion, and change within the organisation, but it transformed the credibility of the solution.
Why listening matters.
Listening is not a weakness. It is the foundation of relevance. Every time I thought I had the answer, clients proved me wrong. Every time I let their input reshape the solution, the product became stronger.
Insurance is not simply a contract, a premium, or a payout. It is a system of trust that underpins families, corporations, and economies. When that system listens, it evolves. When it does not, it risks irrelevance.
What clients taught me.
The lesson I carry is simple: conviction builds direction, but listening builds success. The products that endure are the ones where competence and vision meet humility and dialogue. In a complex, regulated, and rapidly changing industry, this balance is not optional. It is the only way to create solutions that last.
Timecode:
00:00 Starting a Career in Insurance
00:26 The Philosophy of Insurance Sales
01:22 Learning from Mistakes in Product Development
02:10 Client-Centric Approach to Insurance
03:53 Case Study: Large Corporation Insurance Product
06:24 Lessons Learned and Final Thoughts
Francois Links:
Apple Podcast
Transcript:
When I started my career in insurance, I did not know anything about what insurance was simply, it was not my field of study. And, um, I just discovered it, um, a bit by accident. But, uh, I, I liked the, uh, the challenges of it. It was a, it was a young startup. I was the first employee and, uh, I dived right into it, but not knowing anything, so I had to learn a lot. And, uh, what seasoned people of the industry told me at the time was that insurance is sold, is not bought. And although I did not like it, uh, because I was like, uh, it's not exactly my philosophy. I like free choice. I like the fact that, uh, people have, um, the ability to, to, to think about what is good for them, but also I've realized that, uh, we don't do it.
So if we're not confronted. Uh, to, to insurance. Like you buy a car, if you don't have a, an insurance, you can't drive it. And in that sense, insurance is indeed sold. It is brought to you. Uh, the same for a, a lot of type of insurance, uh, whether it's, uh, health, life, or house insurance. A lot of those element either forced upon you as a client or brought to you by an external party. I use a lot. That sentence is my carrier. That insurance is sold and not bought. But led me into a lot of mistakes. I've done a lot of product development, business development, uh, implementation. I've done that as part of my career is in terms of doing the job myself, uh, to leading those development, to implementing, uh, new product in, in very large group, uh, using not only, uh, one division of that group, but several divisions.
So it needed a lot of convincing. And, and, and work to implement. But, uh, the mistake that was consistently made, uh, at the beginning is think that there's a great idea, let's develop a product. Then I thought I was going to be successful, but it's never worked exactly the way we thought of it at the beginning. So, all. We have to have conviction when a product is being developed, but a solution is being brought to the market. Uh, my conviction is also that, uh, we should not be always a hundred percent prisoner of one's conviction. We need to think backwards. Not, not top down, but bottom up. And, and, and of course a lot are doing that, but a lot are doing that in a way which is, let's do it bottom up.
And let's listen to client. But at the end, we will decide what is good for the client. And, and that's something which is a mistake. The best approach is to have ideas, to have competence, to understand what's going on, but also confront and let those ideas being fertilized by interaction with the client. So thinking backward, not, not top down. Not with the eye of a fake, let's listen to client, but really letting the client drive that, uh, the changes. And, um, of course, at the end of the day, there has to be feasible and meaningful. So clients are not alone by doing that. There's a lot of, uh, knowledge in the insurance distribution ecosystem, which needs to be listened to as well.
And, um, it's sometimes, uh. A bit outlandish in terms of request, but very often, uh, it's very powerful and listening to client and their advisors is something which, um, has made average product into good product in my career and change completely the way those, uh, products were sold. I remember a product, um, which was for very large corporation. Across, uh, numerous countries. And the idea was to pull the risk into one single location to diminish the, uh, or to basically to create a, a stable price for a client. And, uh, and, and a long term, uh, financial stability for this type of coverage, which is very appealing for CFOs. Now, this, to be able, that it works, had to have feature inbuilt.
Yeah, that were allowing the stability not to be, um, a wishful thinking from the part of the insurance and, and, and the client. But something really implemented and it's, it's very simple. But although the risk managers of the insurer at the time were willing to listen to client, they were adverse to the idea of a commitment that was a bit longer than than one year, but moving to a three years commitment. And of course, the client did not believe. Of price stability if there was not a three years, not guarantee, but visibility element that was included. And once we've built that in the contract, it changed everything. But it needed so much work to create the, the basic understanding and acceptance by all the parties involved that we wasted one year.
Now, what does it tell? It? Tell two things. It tells that we have to listen to the market to be able to be successful. It needs time to be able to convince people to accept the market's view because insurance is something which needs to be, uh, sustainable in the long term. And two short term decisions are also, um, negative because they can impact. Uh, the company financials in, in a very negative way. Therefore, building product is about, um, listening to client. It's about reversing the process, not top down, but really bottom up. But it needs also that the understanding that it needs building and creating change within the insurance divisions and sometimes, uh, get board approval or changing even the guidelines if needed.
But in a way which always protects the client in the long term and, and making sure that the company is stable in the long term. So that's one of the things that I've learned during my career and, uh, every time that, uh, I thought I had a solution, I was proven wrong by clients and, um, listening to them has made. The product that, uh, we were selling much more successful.