With its vital financial protection against unforeseen catastrophes like sickness, accidents, and natural disasters, insurance plays a vigorous role in today’s hurried world. Through insurance, people and families can recover from large losses without having to shoulder excessive financial burdens because the risk is dispersed throughout a broader pool.

By providing a safety net against life’s uncertainties, people can pursue their goals with confidence and promote economic growth and personal financial stability.

Hussam A. Alkannas is a seasoned executive and creative leader with more than 20 years of experience nurturing innovation and success in the insurance industry. As the CEO of one of the top insurance companies, Al Etihad Cooperative Insurance Company, Alkannas actively creates pioneering goods and services that provide unparalleled security and comfort to both individuals and companies.

His solid dedication to perfection and his ability to inspire high-achieving teams are the company’s main sources of success and further solidify the company’s standing as a trustworthy risk management partner.

Let’s explore the key points from the interview:

Can you please introduce yourself and your motivation to embark on this sector?

With an educational background in business and regulatory experience in the field in the era when the Saudi insurance regulatory framework was being formulated, I found myself more interested in insurance and the art of accepting, transferring, mitigating, and breaking down risks into smaller and more tolerable pieces.

My education journey started at King Saud University, where I earned my bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1998, followed by an MBA from the University of Southampton in 2004.

Having spent more than 14 years of my career at the Insurance Supervision Department of the Saudi Arabian Monitory Agency, I got more fascinated by the insurance science, which drove me to earn my Fellowship of the Chartered Insurance Institute of the UK.

I was certainly driven by the hope of giving the newly regulated Saudi insurance market at the time more of what I could.

Could you please give a brief introduction to your company and its inception story?

Al Etihad’s heritage goes back to 1983, when a group of seasoned and visionary businessmen decided to put hands with each other to establish an insurance company they called Trade Union Insurance Company, licensed to write all nonlife insurance lines.

Having met their business needs and gained their trust, the word spread fast, and the company gained momentum as a professional and trusted insurer, mostly known in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom of Bahrain.

The time has come since 2006 when SAMA, now known as the Insurance Authority, introduced the first Saudi Insurance Implementing Regulations, which resulted in the transformation of the company to the current public shareholding legal form. Since then, the company has gone through a series of developments, from changing the name to AL ETIHAD to successfully navigating through all the turbulent times the Saudi insurance market has gone through.

Today, we are proud to have successfully completed four rounds of profit capitalization to double the paid-up capital since inception without having our shareholders support the company with any additional funds at any time. Today, Al Etihad is an icon among Saudi insurance companies, known for its solid financial position and steady financial performance record.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your role as CEO, and how did you overcome it?

Being a CEO is all about challenges; a case that’s not challenging shouldn’t be with a CEO! My tenure as a CEO has certainly shaped me, and I don’t think it’s fair to say one challenge was bigger than the other; each one had a different aftertaste and a different takeaway with its goods and bads, but I can surely confirm that any challenge becomes easier when there’s a supportive board and a team of strong and loyal players.

How do you maintain a healthy work-life balance as the leader of a company?

Work-life balance is probably the hurdle that every executive has been trying to solve for the longest time. I think it all comes down to your ambitions to achieve your dreams and the vision you’re calling your team to believe in, and it gets even more complicated when your team becomes your family. Time is limited, and everyone expects more of you. To be fair, you also expect more from everyone. I can only say that I do my best to quench my thirst to achieve my ambitions for both work and personal life, and I shuffle between them as needed.

How do you foster a positive and productive company culture, and what role do you play in shaping it?

Building trust, integrity, and a common goal are essential to creating a pleasant and effective workplace culture. Through promoting open communication, setting a good example, and making sure that everyone feels included and appreciated in the pursuit of our shared objectives, I play a significant part in forming this culture.

What are the most important qualities or skills you believe a successful CEO must possess?

Above all, honesty and trustworthiness are the two most important qualities any human being should possess to secure people’s buy-in. Mix these with leading by example, and you’ll find yourself surrounded by a strong team that can overcome any challenge, implement any strategy, and achieve any vision.

How do you approach strategic decision-making, and what factors do you consider when making critical choices for the company?

As a CEO in charge of strategic decision-making, I am required to evaluate my decisions and choices wearing multiple lenses to weigh the interests of multiple stakeholders: investors, employees, Employees, Customers, Society, and within regulatory boundaries.

In my view, the optimal outcome of your decisions is always somewhere in the middle, and I am continuously aiming and focusing to hit the red dot in the middle. Most importantly, it is important to collect as many views as possible and information about the probable impact on the interests of those stakeholders when assessing the soundness of any strategic decision.

In your experience, what are the key drivers of innovation and growth within your industry?

Technology and automation have been developing rapidly in the past 5 years; the distance is now shorter for clients, expectations are higher, and entry barriers to the market have become easier with lower costs. Insurance companies’ presence used to be measured by the number of branches they have, which supported their reach and physical presence in a certain geography; nowadays, the digital presence is quickly taking over the brick-and-mortar model we know.

To further comprehend the magnitude of this change in Saudi Arabia in 2023, sales through digital brokerage channels grew by 49% while traditional brokerage channel sales declined by 3%; furthermore, direct digital sales grew by 86% while traditional direct sales declined by 7%.

Computation power is continuously developing, and with it, more solutions and market trends are emerging, and the challenge is to stay up for it. This revolution did not only impact the sales side of the eco system, but it also impacted the way business is done, the number of employees needed to complete a transaction, and the level of expertise and skill set you need in your employees.

Keeping up is an ongoing story from now on, and the economy is smart in the sense that supply will always follow demand, both on the client and employment sides. We’re there and will continue to evolve.

How do you stay informed about industry trends, emerging technologies, and changes in the competitive landscape?

I can fairly say that CEOs operating in Saudi Arabia are lucky to be part of the Insurance Authority’s supervisory umbrella. Among all informative channels, the IA is continuously keeping CEOs under their umbrella informed about the latest industry trends; in fact, they create local trends in many cases.

Staying close to our technology partners, keeping our management and staff up to date with trainings, and periodic mixing with other markets allows for more fresh ideas and trend observations to be circulated among the company.

What is your leadership style, and how do you motivate and inspire your team to achieve the company’s goals?

Strong belief in the vision, leading by example, understanding failures, and sharing the success.There’s no one way of doing it, and there’s no leader with one level of energy. I ought to be left up and push forward, but there come times when I extend my energy from the team; that’s the fruit of building a solid team where values built on trust and honesty are shared and adopted.

What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs or business leaders looking to follow in your footsteps?

There is no one way of doing things, and every hiccup is a step closer to success. Most importantly, don’t do it for the money. Money is a natural outcome of continuous, smart, hard work.

What is your vision for the future of your company, and what steps are you taking to ensure its long-term sustainability and growth?

Our vision is to continue the success journey of Al Etihad, maintain its prominent position among the top and preferred insurers of Saudi Arabia, and strengthen the shareholders belief in this organization for having a solid financial position and steady financial performance.

Al Etihad’s team is all aligned with the company’s strategy, which was built around four major pillars: Digitization, Sales & Marketing, Reinsurance, and Governance. Every pillar of those is backed up with a detailed action plan that aims to have the enhancement of each pillar complete the other. It tackles different angles of operational enhancements, from licensing new lines of business to marketing strategies to building teams around them, and a lot more.

With our vision, strategy, and team, we’re confident that a top five insurer position in the coming five years is attainable.