Executive Insights: Sedgwick Executive Chairman Dave North
This longtime industry leader believes 'insurance is a noble calling.'
Dave North grew up around Detroit firefighters. As a kid, it was hard for him to imagine doing anything with his life other than being a firefighter.
So North enlisted in the Air Force to become the best firefighter he could be. His training there led him to a degree in fire protection engineering and, eventually, a longtime career in insurance.
This Michigan native, who now calls Memphis home, brought a fire fighter’s dedication to service to his insurance career. Now 65, North plays a bit of golf and has developed a love of philanthropy, not to mention spending time with his college-aged daughter. But Sedgwick’s executive chairman still has a passion for insurance, a career he considers “incredibly noble.”
PropertyCasualty360: What do you see as the greatest benefits of working in insurance/?
Dave North: Not much happens in our society without insurance. You can’t buy a car without insurance. You can’t open a business without insurance. You don’t put a spacecraft into orbit without insurance or develop a vaccine. Commerce doesn’t happen without insurance. It’s a fundamental part of the fabric of society, and it enables us to do all of the other amazing things that we do. So I think insurance is an incredibly noble profession, and I’m proud to have spent a career in the insurance industry.
PC360: What are your guiding principles as a professional and as a leader?
North: I was hired as the CEO 27 years ago, so I’m fortunate to have been in that capacity for a long time. Early on, you rely on the skills you think you have, but you quickly realize that leadership isn’t about what you have or what you can do. It’s about what you can do for the others in your organization, what you can do to enable them to be better. So leadership, to me, is about being able to articulate an attainable vision that people can believe in.
PC360: Who have been some of your mentors, and what lessons did you learn from them?
North: My dad, Dave North Sr., was really important to me. He passed away 13 years ago, but you know, he’s still with me every day. He continues to provide support to me in a lot of different ways.
My dad always worked in a small business. He worked for his dad, my grandfather. First, they had a small grocery store, and then they had a small carpet-cleaning business. Today we would label them entrepreneurs, but they just thought that’s what they had to do.
My dad also was an alcoholic for a large chapter of his life. He had a lot of demons, but our family stayed together through it all. Alcoholism is a difficult, complicated issue. A lot of people in our society deal with substance abuse or psychological issues, a variety of different things. I saw through my dad that people can get through the toughest and most challenging things when they have the personal resolve and a support network.
When he died, he had been sober for 37 years.
PC360: What do you think makes Sedgwick special? How does the company stand out among the industry’s major players?
North: That is absolutely one of the hardest questions I ever get asked. It’s hard because people have expectations of the organization. Fortunately, Sedgwick has had a very consistent history of growth and development. Today we are a leading global provider of technology-enabled risk, benefits and integrated business solutions.
People expect me to say that there’s one thing, a silver bullet. They want me to say it’s the technology or it’s the people or it’s our processes or it’s our leadership. But I really believe that it’s all of those things. Because when you achieve a place in history like Sedgwick has, you have to get almost everything right almost all of the time.
PC360: What do you think have been the most significant recent changes in insurance?
North: It’s amazing how fast our world changes. In my career, I can remember a time before we had cell phones. Now they are these amazing devices that give us access to the entire world.
So technology, for sure, has to be one of them. I think the insurance industry gets a bad rap when it comes to technology. I’m not sure we were the earliest adopters of technology, but I would say that the insurance industry of today has fully embraced it. It enables everything that we do.
The other change is the same change that society has seen: Our workforce today is 42% millennials. It wasn’t so long ago that we were all reading books and talking about what was going to happen when millennials entered the workforce. Now more than 40% of our workers are millennials. It’s not just that they’re young people. It’s that they grew up in an age of technology. They don’t even know the limits of what technology will do.
PC360: What do you see as the top issues facing insurers?
North: You know, I’m in the claims business. I’m quite happy that I’m not in the underwriting part of the insurance industry. I think about the complexities of assessing and underwriting risk. (Insurers) have always had to do this, but now they have issues related to cybersecurity, and the pandemic, and terrorism. And then there are the significant natural disasters occurring around the planet, and you have to sort of consider what could happen.
I think the claims part of our industry will really be able to help underwriters get through all of this uncertainty. The claims world helps bridge what underwriters thought was going to happen with what actually happened with real-time data that enables insureds to manage all of these new exposures.
It’s a challenging time in the insurance industry, but I’m really proud of the way the claims world has been able to translate claims back to underwriters.
Sedgwick and Safety National are sponsors of the 75th Annual Workers’ Compensation Educational Conference happening Dec. 12-15, 2021, in Orlando, Fla. This event is where three winners of NU Property & Casualty’s annual Workers’ Comp Risk Management Award for Excellence will be honored. Nominations are being accepted for the award through Sept. 1, 2021, at www.propertycasualty360.com/static/wcrm-awards/.
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