Guardian’s CEO: Leading with a purpose that transcends immediate goals and reflects a deeper commitment to positive change and enduring values.
You might say Andrew McMahon discovered his thing in college. That thing?
He didn’t like limiting himself to just one thing.
“I have a lot of natural curiosity,” the president and CEO of Guardian Life Insurance Company of America (Guardian) told Irish America during a recent Zoom interview from his office in Manhattan.
Most people in college are busy enough writing papers or studying for exams. But McMahon found time for “several entrepreneurial ventures” during his years at Connecticut’s Fairfield University.
“I worked a lot in college,” he adds. “I had a painting company, a valet car parking company…. I also worked as a bartender and ran a bar. I worked at UPS, and I delivered Domino’s Pizza.”
Aside from making money to help pay for college, McMahon discovered something important about himself.
“What I realized is that I like diversity of things. That’s what shaped my career.”
LOOKING BACK, LOOKING AHEAD
It’s certainly paid off. Last year, Guardian surpassed $2 billion in operating income for the first time in the company’s 164-year history, McMahon noted in a recent letter to customers and staff.
Guardian also paid out $1.4 billion to policyholders, also an all-time high, while earning high ratings from firms like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s, as well as industry recognition from J.D. Power, Dalbar, and InvestmentNews.
Looking back on seven years at the top of one of America’s leading mutual insurance companies, McMahon says: “I feel really good about how we are distinguishing ourselves.”
He understands there will be challenges – technological, economic, and political – in a future that is often impossible to predict.
But such challenges are precisely what appeals to him about his job.
“A lot of unpredictable things come up every single day. All I really know every day is that I can fill my calendar from five a.m. to nine p.m.”
Then again, early starts are nothing new for McMahon.
“Hard work was always an important value in my family. Whatever you do, you have to give it your best. So I grew up delivering the Pennysaver (newspaper). Then it was the New York Daily News every morning – on my bicycle, for a few miles to people’s houses in the pitch black on most mornings. …They say the postman goes in any weather but that was me, too – in the snow, in the rain, and whatever, on a bike.”
FROM CORK TO THE BRONX
It’s been a long journey for McMahon and his family, from their roots in County Cork to The Bronx, New York, where his parents lived, before settling on Long Island to raise Andrew and his three siblings.
“Family has always been important,” said McMahon, whose mother was a teacher while his father worked in the insurance industry.
“Family, faith, and education were the priorities…particularly Catholic education,” adds McMahon, who attended a Franciscan High School, followed by Fairfield, a Jesuit college, where he has served on the Board of Trustees for almost 15 years.
“It’s shaped who I am today,” he says of receiving a Jesuit education, “from a leadership and values perspective, to how I make decisions. And being grateful for all we have, given where our ancestors came from, and some of the tough challenges that exist in the world. We should be appreciative.”
McMahon’s mother also offered some valuable guidance in college, given his wide range of interests.
“I was always good at Math and it was my mother who said you should study Computer Science, because that’s going to be a big field some day. She was right. I got into Computer Science a little bit ahead of time, actually,” he says with a smile.
McMahon adds that he received similar support from his extended Irish American family.
“We have lots of attributes of the classic Irish family: work hard, get a good education, go to church, and everything else will work out for you. That’s where my family was coming from.”
He added: “My grandparents, when they got older, they moved out close to us on Long Island. It was always a family tradition on weekends and holidays, for all of us to be together.”
His grandmother had a particularly interesting way of celebrating McMahon’s First Communion.
“It was in May and it was the day of the Kentucky Derby. It was a family tradition that my Irish grandmother would go to OTB and she would take all our bets. That year of my First Communion, I won the pool!”
IMMIGRANT ROOTS
Guardian’s bet on McMahon’s leadership has also paid off.
The company’s “focus on long-term value creation and our orientation to the future will continue to position us for success in our ever-evolving world,” he added in his recent letter. “Our potential to make a difference in peoples’ lives has never been stronger. Our passion for our customers and dedication to each other has been the critical ingredient to our continued success.”
McMahon also touted Guardian’s “mind, body, and wallet” approach, and its “three key strategic priorities:”
• Wow the consumer by addressing every aspect of well-being at each stage of life.
• Reimagine mutuality by focusing on what matters to our customers, colleagues, and
communities.
• Unleash what’s possible by valuing our number one asset – our talented workforce.
McMahon also feels it’s important to emphasize that Guardian began by serving mid-19th Century immigrant communities.
“Lots of insurance companies evolved to help immigrant communities. With the Irish you can look at the Knights of Columbus – that was Irish families helping Irish families. At the time, many insurance companies were pooling a bunch of risk – for immigrants originally, and classes of people that may have been deprived or didn’t have these needed protections.”
That all being said, after graduating from college, McMahon did not necessarily know his future was in corporate leadership.
“I had a computer science degree. I didn’t know much about how an entire business ecosystem worked. How do you run a large company? I didn’t really have that much exposure to that or a great understanding of it.”
His first important step was simply being open to new experiences – and places. He entered a General Electric management-training program, which took him to Louisville, Kentucky.
“For those of us from the Northeast,” McMahon says with a grin, “the Southern culture is very different. It was an eye-opening experience.”
He describes the GE programs as “rotational,” meaning he was doing many different things every few months. All of this was helpful when he worked at the consulting giant McKinsey, which led him to being hired at the insurance company AXA, where he was eventually named president. All of this experience led him to discussions with the leadership team at Guardian.“We were discussing a lot of different things at one point, and I was asked: “Well, would you ever consider coming here?”
REFLECTION
McMahon was prompted to take a closer look at “the complexity of all these intertwined systems” that make an insurance company run – and to also do some deeper soul-searching.
“I had to ask myself: What should a life insurance company look like? And do?”
McMahon liked that Guardian was a mutual company, owned by the policyholders.
“As opposed to a public company which I’ve also worked at, where I have a shareholder in between the policyholder and the management team. That can create quite a conflict… Am I giving a return to the shareholder or am I giving richer benefits to a policyholder?”
He adds: “Guardian was founded on helping people … on immigrant communities and being there to help them. That’s an important thing for me, to focus on communities and helping people … providing a service to individuals in their greatest times of need. ...I get letters and notes from people when our products and services begin and it’s a rewarding feeling.”
Finally, McMahon wanted to update the overall experience people generally have with insurance companies.
“I know people have in their mind like, ‘I gotta call the insurance company, and this is going to be painful.’ It shouldn’t be that. When people work with us, they don’t feel like they’re actually doing business with an insurance company. I have seen it over the last couple years – my inbox of complaints has been getting smaller and my inbox of accolades bigger.”
McMahon says that after long days tied up inside offices, he tries to spend leisure time outside – gardening, perhaps, if not golfing. In his spare time, McMahon has also taken half a dozen trips to Ireland in recent years, where he’s golfed at Waterville in Kerry, as well Old Head in Cork.
McMahon also recently became a grandfather; two of his sons are now married, while the third just got engaged.
LOOKING AHEAD
Like most industries, insurance is facing profound challenges because of technology.
“What’s evolved quite a bit is the cyber security risk. That’s got everyone on his or her toes all the time. We didn’t have that as much in 2017.”
Artificial intelligence also presents an array of new challenges and opportunities.
“AI must be used for good and with the proper controls. I think the benefits of AI for the insurance industry can be great. We are an industry that is driven by data on underwriting risks and investing, and a lot of that data, frankly, has been analog for a long time.”
McMahon adds: “Covid accelerated some of the digitization – or else we could not have done business. But I think that now A.I. data processing storage costs are going down it will accelerate digitization of the insurance industry. And what I like to call a much more contemporary consumer experience should be evolving in our industry.”
Of course, there is also an election coming up that will impact all of America, including the insurance industry.
Whoever wins, McMahon says: “At the highest level I think we need some unity. We need to bring the United States of America back to the ‘United’ part. That for me is the most bipartisan and I think a great leader can bring the country together. We may not always agree but in history that’s what I think what great leaders do.”
In the end, right now, he is excited about the future – his own and Guardian’s.
“You choose a job you love and you’ll never have to work a day in your life and that’s a bit of how I feel today.” ♦
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