Podcast Ep 244: Irish Pensions & Finance CEO Claire Hanrahan on how a business with a 50/50 male-female board and 72% female senior leadership is driving change in a traditionally male-dominated industry.
As financial businesses go, Irish Pensions & Finance (IPF) is blazing a trail in terms of women leadership at both executive and board-level.
The business is an outlier in terms of equality and empowering all staff- male and female – to develop their careers and achieve their potential.
“It’s all about education, mentoring and creating role models”
Proving diversity works, it now has €1bn under management, counts more than 30,000 customers and last year achieved record revenues of €10m.
We spoke to the CEO of IPF Claire Hanrahan, who joined the business as a junior executive and worked her way up the ranks.
Be the change
IPF was established in 1993 by Owen Dwyer and in 1995 David Dunleavy came on as a partner.
A strong partner of New Ireland Assurance, IPF is a leading player in the provision of pension products and services for public sector workers. Based in Bracetown in Co Meath, the business had a humble start operating out of an apartment in Blanchardstown Village.
Intent on driving change, IPF were credited with launching one of the first AVC (additional voluntary contribution) schemes for civil servants in Ireland, with workers from the local authorities and the HSE among the first to embrace AVCs.
“They went around to the various life assurance funds to establish AVC schemes and New Ireland said yes.”
It was a pivotal move as the pension landscape in the corporate and public sector worlds was changing. The days gold plated pension packages were being replaced with a more self-service model that has proliferated across all industries.
Hanrahan joined IPF as a trainee 20 years ago and in that time has seen fundamental changes in the pension fund industry. “I was just looking through the numbers and 67% of our customers are female. Why is that? Typically women will lose about six years of service due to parental leave time, career breaks, reduced working weeks. But I’ve started to see a trend of men starting to do that too. But typically women will see six years’ of reduction in their pension. And that’s where we come into help with a solution, helping to boost up your shortfall and we put our adviser cap on to show what they can do to boost the gap.”
Armed with a degree in Business and Languages, Hanrahan had a natural curiosity around sales. “At the time the business was in an apartment on Blanchardstown’s main street and I just clicked with the guys. I liked what they were doing and worked my way up. At the time there weren’t that many female financial planners in the industry. I said: ‘I want to be a financial planner, I’ll be able for it.’ And they guys were really progressive. They told me to get a car, operate with a mindset of replacing myself and get certain qualifications. So we hit all three milestones. They showed a good bit of faith in me and I got promoted.”
From those early days the business has grown to 100 staff with 30,000 customers and 38,000 policies and some €1bn worth of funds under management.
Ireland’s pensions landscape is about to undergo a fundamental transformation with the introduction of auto-enrolment by the Irish State, making Ireland one of the last countries in the developed world to do so.
Hanrahan is clear that this is not going to be a silver bullet for the challenge of funding pensions long into the future, but it’s finally a step in the right direction. “The average life expectancy in Ireland is between 82 and 85. When we sit down and talk to people about retirement, hopefully they will have a third of their life to plan for. It’s a big amount of time. But it can be quite exciting. People are healthier and more active in retirement, but with that comes the need for more money.”
When people get it right, it is obviously rewarding. “It’s funny, with our advisors, they will tell you that the most satisfactory part of their job is when people retire. They’ve made the sacrifice, they paid the money in and their mentality is so much better because they have a pot of money there.”
The power of progress
One of the hallmarks of IPF, and what sets it apart in the industry, is the strong female leadership in the business at management and board level.
“57% of our staff are women. On the senior management team 72% are women. And on the board it is 50/50 male and female. This absolutely bucks the trend in the industry.”
Hanrahan credits the progressive environment that Dwyer and Dunleavy allowed to flourish in the business and the supportive ethos in place. “Owen is the chair of the board and David is still a non-executive director on the board. They were very progressive in that they saw people’s ability, they didn’t see what sex you were.”
She joined the business in 2005 and in 2008 was promoted to sales manager and has steadily worked her way to the top. “In that time I have had three kids and I was always supported. I think it’s a really good kind of role model for the younger women coming through the ranks seeing me as the CEO and go ‘okay, she’s done what she wants to do, she’s climbed the ranks, she came in as a trainee just like me, she’s had her family. So I think that’s as important as a role model can get. They also see that the CEO and CFO are women. So there’s a lot of strong female role models in IPF.”
This no doubt jars with the perception of the finance industry as a kind of old boy’s club. “Well, you’re either made for this or you are not. But I think what Owen and David saw in a lot of the women at IPF was that we bring emotional intelligence and empathy. Because the main thing when you sit down with a customer is finding out what’s important to them. Some of the most emotionally intelligent people I know in our company are men, but it’s just what women bring to the table.
“In IPF there’s no boys club, we all just work together, collaborate together and we’re all very proud of the culture we have built up.”
There is one very simple rule at IPF that has perhaps been the kernel of truth as to why it has bucked industry trends in terms of diversity. Hanrahan nails it: “Everybody who joins IPF comes in as a trainee. We don’t hire on experience.”
She elaborates: “There is a €6,000 bursary for education which would mainly cover the QFA (Qualified Financial Advisor) phase, but we’re also very keen to get everybody up to CFP (Certified Financial Planner) level. We feel that the better educated our staff are, the more confident they are and the better they are with our customers.
“Ultimately we want everybody to get up to a Master’s level if possible. Currently we have 25 trainees and what I love about it is they are sitting exams together and have formed little study groups. You’d often see them huddled in the boardroom at lunchtime working together.
“What gives me great satisfaction is seeing people coming in, working with us through our career path, having really nice lives and being able to buy their house, have kids, go travelling … it just gives you massive satisfaction.”
In terms of what other businesses can learn from IPF’s path to a gender-balanced businesses, Hanrahan believes it is about mentorship programmes in place for males and females.
“I went to a convent school where the nuns had an ethos that encouraged us to do honours maths and business. So I think it starts in school where you encourage the girls.
“It’s all about education, mentoring and creating role models.”
-
Bank of Ireland is welcoming new customers every day – funding investments, working capital and expansions across multiple sectors. To learn more, click here
-
Listen to the ThinkBusiness Podcast for business insights and inspiration. All episodes are here. You can also listen to the Podcast on:
-
Spotify
-
SoundCloud
-
Apple
