Zara Scowen celebrates 20 years service with Insurance Corporation!

This year we are celebrating a number of long service milestones within the Company.  Today we are delighted to recognise and celebrate Zara's significant 20th year anniversary of her employment with us.  Reaching this milestone is a very special occasion for Zara and is testimony to her loyalty and dedication to ICCI over the years.

Zara joined ICCI on 1 November 2004 as an Underwriting Assistant on a temporary basis, working her way up to become the Technical Lead for our underwriting team.  We caught up with Zara who reflects over the past 20 years.

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been 20 years already! I was 17 years old when I went for my first interview, very nervous, I don’t even recall prepping anything and basically went for the interview because my parents were, let’s say, “encouraging” me to get a “proper” job after college. Fast forward 20 years, I’m still here, I’ve grown a lot during that time and love my job.

I started off in the then Motor team on a temp basis, which I did for around 6 months, whilst completing my Cert CII, before being offered a full time position and moving over to our then Household team.  At some stage I became Team Co-Ordinator for this team, which over the next few years developed and we also started to take on some of the Property Owners and Packages business.

The decision was then made to split the Underwriting department up into two teams, Personal Lines and Commercial.  It was at this point that I decided to move over to Commercial, to gain a better understanding of the more complex commercial classes, improve my technical underwriting knowledge and complete my insurance Diploma.

In 2018 I applied and was accepted for an internal Technical Underwriting Lead role, which is where I am today getting involved in a variety of projects to help improve the underwriting function of the business, in addition to large/complex case underwriting.

I’ve learnt so much in the last 20 years, with various courses, time spent with RSA and just generally day to day.  There’s so much variety within underwriting and the industry as a whole and you get the opportunity to meet a lot of people – some of my best friends I’ve met working here. 

ICCI is a great employer, with an amazing team and whilst I have no means of comparison, I’ve always been fully supported both professionally and personally, more so than you would reasonably expect at times – they really go the extra mile to make you feel cared for.  They understand the intrinsic link between wellbeing and performance and balance it well, which really shines through in the culture of the business and probably the reason I’ve been here for over half of my life.

Sarah Beatty said ......

It has been a pleasure to have worked alongside Zara over the past 20 years.  Zara has continuously developed her knowledge in many classes of business over the time she has been with us, and now deals with some of our most complex and large cases.  She is respected and valued, both by our team and the market and we look forward to continuing to work with her into the future. 

Zara, thank you for your long service, and for choosing Insurance Corporation to build your career.

Congratulations Zara and thank you from all the team at ICCI for all your hard work and dedication - here's to many more years with us!