Zurich Insurance Case Study

Situation

Zurich Group is a leading multi-line insurer that serves its customers in more than 215 countries and territories and employs 55,000 people. As with most in-house legal teams, resource and skills gaps can appear without much notice and have a detrimental impact on the team’s effectiveness if not adequately addressed quickly. Furthermore, finding legal resource has always proved challenging compounding the problem over a protracted period of time. Whenever Zurich found themselves with a resource or skills gap, they were keen to find a flexible solution, with the potential to offer resource quickly and at a proven quality. 

Steps taken

Zurich already had an existing relationship with the firm when they first chose to utilise Vario in 2014. Since then, Zurich have turned to Vario on a number of occasions for flexible solutions when faced with subsequent resource or skills gaps. 

“I knew that Vario was the right solution for us because I’ve used them before and they’ve always provided us with really good quality candidate within the time scale that we needed them.”

Tracey Anderson, Head of Legal for UK Retail and Life, Funds and Investments.

In the latest example, Zurich were seeking full time support to cover a resource gap for a period of six months. The Vario team took a detailed brief, which focussed on the technical and behavioural qualities required to succeed in this assignment. 

Vario Flexible Services uses a unique matching service that identifies a shortlist of specialist lawyers from our hub of stringently vetted, high-quality legal consultants. Within a short space of time, suitably qualified lawyers deemed to be a good fit based on the individuals’ technical and behavioural qualities demonstrated on prior assignments were then presented to Zurich for interview. Following this interview process, a candidate was selected and quickly offered a start time within the desired timeframe. 

Subsequently, the Vario team arranged for the individual to meet with client relationship partner who was able to provide relevant know how and ongoing support to ensure they were well-equipped to add maximum value early on in their assignment.  

Results

Since working with Vario in 2014, Zurich has used Vario to engage flexible legal resource on eight further occasions. Some of these assignments have been project-led and others BAU in nature, on a full and part time basis and remotely or working in a hybrid way. On all occasions, the individuals presented by Vario were able to start quickly and appropriately matched to the client’s requirements and on two occasions, the individuals opted to join Zurich on a permanent basis and this has further strengthened the relationship between Zurich and Pinsent Masons to the benefit of all parties.