Policy Shifts: MassMutuai responds to a changing landscape
They call it 'State and Main.'
There's a
There is a row of these stations along one wall, which, coincidentally, was the old end point of the building before an addition was built. Where the windows once were, there are now photographs depicting work life at
If you're looking for evidence of just how much things have changed, you can juxtapose a solitary worker on a laptop in one of these workspaces in front of a huge photo depicting row upon row of desks - an iconic glimpse of the workplace maybe a century ago (see photo above).
It took a long time to get from where things were in that photograph to where they are today, but the pace of change is rapidly accelerating - even when it comes to a product seemingly frozen in time, like life insurance.
While the basic insurance products haven't changed much over time, how people research them, shop for them, and ultimately buy them have, said
"We're looking a lot at how to do business with people the way they want to do business," he explained, adding that there is much that goes into this equation. "The single biggest thing that the technology revolution has done is give consumers the power to interact the way they want to interact.
"We can't say, 'you can only talk to us on the phone'; we can't say, 'you can only talk to us in person,"' he went on. "We have to be able to meet consumers where they want to be met, and that is what we call an omni-channel world."
Responding to this new landscape is just one of the many organizational focal points for Crandall and
As a result, there are far fewer of those large, private offices that once dominated large financial-services companies and often defined how high one had risen in the ranks, and much more of those open workspaces like those along State and Main.
These changes are taking place at all of
Indeed, there will be
Meanwhile, in
Still another focal point for the company is
Overall, the city has rebounded nicely from the financial turmoil of a decade or so ago, and the opening of
For this issue, BusinessWest caught up with Crandall for a wide-ranging interview that touched on everything from
Space Exploration
That interview took place in Crandall's spacious office on the second floor of its headquarters building. As he gestured toward his surroundings, Crandall, who has occupied them since 2010, admitted candidly that he wasn't exactly sure what would become of them as
"This office is a dinosaur; no one would build an office like this in a new building," he told BusinessWest. "This space may very well have 20 people in it when we're all done - there's plenty of room for 20 people in here in a modern configuration."
He was more certain about many other things, especially the company's changing footprint when it comes to facilities. It wifi be a smaller, more efficient footprint, he noted, one shaped to address a number of challenges and opportunities moving forward.
This change to the landscape has resulted from some seismic shifts over the past several years, especially a number of acquisitions - including
These changes prompted the company to take a much-needed step back, said Crandall, before it could decide how to move forward.
"We said, 'this is a good time to step back and say, 'how is our geographic footprint aligned with what we're trying to do from a long-term perspective?"' he recalled. "And that prompted us to take a look at a whole variety of options."
Elaborating, he said recent acquisitions left the company with facilities in
"Although people work in different ways and the ability to work remotely is greater than ever because of technology, it's really important to have more people interacting with each other," he explained, "to get the best ideas, the best execution, and to take advantage of the diversity our workforce has.
"It's great to be able to connect through devices, but face-to-face meetings are really important," he went on, noting that roughly 2,000 employees will be relocated to
That makes sense on other levels as well, he noted, adding that the company was really only using about 60% of its facilities in
At the same time, the company has put an even greater emphasis on the broad issue of workforce development and the challenge of attracting and retaining top talent.
And this combination of factors prompted a long, hard look at
"We thought about how to set ourselves up to attract the best and the brightest for the next 25 or 30 years," said Crandall. "And that's where having a location in
"
But while
The fact that it is only 90 minutes away on the Turnpike from the
"It's very, very different running a company where people can drive back and forth, and running a company where you have to get on a plane," he noted. "And from that culture perspective, that became important to us as well."
Room for Improvement
As for the facilities in
But more people will be working at that location - and turning up at State and Main for lattes, to have their phone repaired, to get their dry cleaning, and, increasingly, to get some work done as well.
As Crandall noted earlier, there will be fewer private offices moving forward and more open spaces where people can work and collaborate as the company strives to moves away from a historical hierarchy that has defined much of its history and that of other financial-services giants as well.
The company has already taken a number of significant steps in this direction, he went on, referencing rows of tables where people can work on laptops, spaces where a few people can gather and talk, and larger, technology-equipped meeting spaces, such as those now known simply as the 'tree rooms.'
There's 'Birch,' 'Elm,' 'Maple,' 'Hemlock,' and others. These are meeting facilities created on the fourth floor of the headquarters building - space devoted to basketball courts until 1980 and for less ornate (and modern) meeting spaces in recent years.
Meanwhile, there are more meeting spaces on the ground floor just off State and Main that, like the ones a few floors up, are always occupied and need to be booked well in advance. These rooms are named for national parks, and include 'Yosemite,' 'Zion,' '
As for what's going on in all those meeting rooms, Crandall said the company is focusing its efforts in many directions, including what he called "a digitization of everything we do."
And that brings him back to that omni-channel world he mentioned and the need to meet consumers where they want to be met.
"We're basically building a digital insurance company from scratch to disrupt ourselves," he explained. "It's going to give us the ability to be much more responsive to consumer demands, and have much lower costs, which will enable us take advantage of the next big opportunity, which is to broadly offer more Americans insurance."
Elaborating, he said there are 35 million American families with no insurance at all, and insurance penetration in this country is among the lowest in the world. "When we go out and do focus groups and ask people if they need life insurance, 70% say 'yes,'" he said. "And 50% of the people who have life insurance say they need more life insurance, so there is this big unmet need."
There are many reasons for this, he said, including the fact that fewer people are working for the kinds of large companies that offer life insurance as a benefit, and more are working for smaller ventures that don't, or are self-employed.
To meet that need, the company is responding proactively with products and processes that can put insurance within reach and bring the numbers from those surveys down.
"No normal person sits down and thinks about the process of buying life insurance," he said. "But we took a look at that process a few years ago and determined that it was largely the same as it was in 1995,1985, and, arguably, 1975 - a paper-based application that got sent through snail mail to an underwriter, which triggered a paramed going to someone's house, and a process that begins with someone standing on a scale and goes downhill, from a consumer's perspective, to 25 days later getting told you're not the best risk class and you're going to have to pay more for the product than you thought."
To change that equation, the company's data-science team began working with an accumulated asset - the applications taken for life insurance over the years - and built a machinelearning mortality-scoring model.
"That model, with the support of reinsurers, is being used to underwrite 75% of the policies
And this is just one example of this digitization process, which doubles as a growth strategy.
"What really matters to us in the long run is being able to have the talent we need to execute our mission," Crandall explained, "to help people secure their future and protect the ones they love, and to continue the growth trajectory we've been on - we're now the biggest seller of whole life insurance in the country and are the secondbiggest seller of all life insurance in the country."
Paying Dividends
As
He noted that there have been many forms of progress in recent years, from new vibrancy downtown to the city's much-improved fiscal health, to a better perception of the city across the state and even outside it.
"The vibe in
Especially those in the broad realm of education.
Noting the importance of education to attaining a job in today's technology-based economy, Crandall said
"We know that, in the long run, better educational outcomes are such a powerful way to change people's trajectories in life," he explained, adding that it starts with getting individuals not only through high school, but graduating with the skiffs they will need to thrive in this economy.
But the company's commitment to the city and the region - what Crandall called 'enabling philanthropy' - encompasses many different aspects of economic development, he went on, listing, for example, its work with DevelopSpringfield to revitalize neighborhoods across the city, and its backing of Valley Venture Mentors (
There has also been support of workforce-development initiatives, such as a training center for call-center employees at
Then there's the company's support of ROCA, the agency that works with incarcerated individuals, usually repeat offenders, to help them change the course of their life and succeed outside the prison walls.
"There is no greater waste of a person's potential or, frankly, the economic potential of our community than having a large group of young men who are unemployable or in prison," said Crandall. "When you talk to a young man who's been in prison who's now a member of the carpenter's union, getting married and having a child, and buying a home ... to think about where he is as opposed to when he was 18 - that's inspiring."
Overall, Crandall, deploying that word 'mojo,' said the city has not only many positive developments breaking its way, but also more confidence and self-esteem. Perhaps even more important - and those factors are significant in their own right - is the fact that those outside the city are sharing those sentiments.
To get that point across, he relayed a recent conversation he had while visiting one of the company's agencies in
"I was talking to one of our agents, probably in his mid-30s, and he said, 'I just invested in a property in
Past Is Prologue
Referencing those pictures placed where the windows were on the old exterior wall of the
"It's a pretty neat historical kind of twist that adds an interesting flair to that area," he said, noting that looking back is much easier - and generally more fun - than trying to look forward, anticipate the future, and prepare for it.
But that's just what
Crandall doesn't know what his current office will look like in a year or two, but he does know it won't look like it does now. And there may be 20 people working in that space.
It's a dinosaur that's extinct. The company is moving on from it, reconfiguring, becoming more efficient, and responding proactively to change.
And it's doing that with every aspect of an altered landscape.
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