A career in insurance can certainly take you places. Ben Dunston, now placement leader, Asia, with WTW in Singapore, originally thought insurance would take him snowboarding — a fanciful dream for a university student craving adventure.

“I saw a picture of a guy on a snowboard in a recruitment centre that read: ‘All things in life have an element of risk. Willis.’ As the business student I was, I thought that working for WTW would take me snowboarding as a career.

“I applied, got an interview and ended up joining an insurance broking firm, so it wasn’t quite what I was promised,” he jokes.

His current location has meant swapping snow for sand: the UK-born insurance professional moved to Singapore about seven years ago.

Dunston says that some people in the industry in the UK are content to spend their entire careers in the same place — even at the same ‘box’ for some at the illustrious Lloyd’s of London — but this wasn’t a path that appealed to him.

“I wanted some diversity in my career,” he explains. “Once I made that decision, within two weeks I had a plan to move to Singapore.”

Broad experience

Dunston’s commitment to variety doesn’t end with living and working abroad. He has made the move from broking to underwriting and back to broking — and highly recommends stretching yourself and trying different areas of specialisation.

“It’s a little bit like when people go skiing and they never learn how to snowboard. And when people go snowboarding and they never learn how to ski,” he says. “I’ve never quite understood that. If you love the snow, you love the snow. So, you should mix it up a bit, and I think that gives you a much better perspective.”

Dunston has also gone from working in financial lines to marine, as well as fine art and specie. Plus, he’s a strong advocate for putting your hand up to take on projects outside your current scope of work.

“The main lesson that I learned was to try and get involved in projects that benefit the company outside of your core technicality,” he says. “It gives you exposure to different people within the organisation and different products, distributions, technologies.

All of that is extremely beneficial to you as an individual, but only if you’re a curious person and willing to chalk it up as experience, rather than inconvenience.”

Apart from developing your technical expertise, sometimes these ‘side projects’ result in big pay-offs.

“When I was applying for leadership positions, it was the digital trading platform I helped build for single shipment cargo at one of the leading insurers which actually made me stand out from the other candidates,” says Dunston. “It was a non-core project at the time for me, but it gave me a differentiator when I came to apply for something more senior.”

Improving standards

Dunston is very engaged with the levels of professionalism in the insurance industry, particularly in broking.

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