Project reference · Executive search · Finance & insurance
A life insurer's management team, built one seat at a time.
An international life insurer's Ukrainian company was growing its sales force fast and needed the managers to run it: finance, sales, marketing, IT, control and legal. For five years it came back to us whenever a senior seat opened. We searched quietly in a small market where every candidate knew every competitor, and when one hire did not work out, the fee went into the next search instead of a dispute.
Discreet search in a small market
Method
Stop lists agreed before any call
Discretion
Fee carried over, not argued over
Guarantee
One contact person on our side
Continuity
Five years, one client
Profiles first, then a quiet search
For each role we wrote the profile with the HR team, translated it, and agreed a stop list of companies and people we would not approach. Our researchers mapped the life insurers and the banks' insurance teams, the consultants met the shortlist in our office, and the client saw written summaries before it met anyone. Adverts, where we used them, never named the client.
The brief
A growing insurer without a full management bench
The company sold life and savings products through its own agents, through brokers and through banks, and wanted to double the agent network. Head office had little more than a hundred people, and several key chairs were empty or filled ad interim. Its foreign managers needed people who could report in English to the group's finance and risk functions and still run a local team.
The first request was small: an assistant for the deputy chief executive. Within months it became a chief financial officer and a head of sales, and after a new chief executive arrived, a list of seven priorities agreed in one meeting: bank channel, brokers, corporate sales, IT, strategy, management accounting and operations.
The hard parts
Where it gets difficult
A market of a few hundred people
Senior people in life insurance all knew each other, and many would not consider the sector at all. We kept every approach confidential, checked each name against the client's stop list, and looked in banking and consulting as well.
Pay that had to fit a group grid
Offers had to fit the client's salary scale and bonus rules, while candidates compared them with offers from banks. We collected salary expectations early and told the client when a profile and a budget did not meet.
A hire who left in probation
When a deputy sales director we had placed left within the probation period, the client asked for the fee back or an offset. We agreed the offset in a day, confirmed it in one letter and settled it against the next search. The relationship continued for three more years.
Briefs that changed in mid-search
One marketing role was redefined three times and ended up as a public-relations post. We rewrote the profile each time and carried the useful part of the candidate pool into the new brief, rather than starting again from zero.
Roles nobody advertises
Security officer, internal auditor and senior lawyer are hard to fill from adverts alone. We combined adverts that did not name the client with direct approaches, and the client's HR team checked each first name against its own list before it saw a CV.
From hiring people to running HR
Once the management team stood, the client asked whether we could take over HR administration and payroll for its head-office staff. We answered with a costed proposal, a data questionnaire and a process flow for quarterly bonus calculation.
What we did
Search, guarantee, research, outsourcing proposal
- Years 1–2 · Finance and sales. Assistant to the deputy chief executive, chief financial officer, head of sales, accountants, then the seven priority roles: bank channel, brokers, corporate sales, IT, strategy, management accounting and operations.
- Years 2–3 · Marketing, IT and control. Marketing manager and public-relations specialist, IT manager, an interim consultant, security officer and internal auditor, with written candidate summaries for each shortlist.
- Year 4 · Legal and finance research. Head of legal, a senior bank-channel director and a research project on finance directors across the market.
- Years 4–5 · HR and payroll. A proposal for HR administration and payroll outsourcing, a quarterly bonus-payroll offer, and two more searches for a senior lawyer and a chief accountant.
A management team is not hired in one go. It is built seat by seat, and the search firm that stays is the one the client can call again without explaining itself.
In the client's words
“New legal is doing well, thank you!”
The client's HR director, a month after a senior legal hire.
How we work
We do not show you another company's name
The client, its owners and its people are not named here, and they will not be named in a meeting either. We are glad to talk this project through in detail. What we will not do is discuss the last client that way with you, or you with the next one.
Next step
A senior seat to fill in a market where everyone knows everyone?
Tell us the role and the names you do not want approached. You will get a written profile to agree first, and a shortlist you can discuss without anyone hearing about it.