Nikhil Advani

Promoted to CEO. Led AIA Sri Lanka’s growth in its topline and outperformance in VONB and other financial KPIs, demonstrating growth and resilience during some of the most challenging economic times for Sri Lanka. Successfully expanded Agency distribution and turned around Bancassurance to be highly productive and value accretive for AIA Sri Lanka. Successfully expanded AIA’s leadership in pensions and health insurance to ensure the best in class propositions and stronger product margins. Passionate about leveraging technology to deliver better customer experience and efficiencies, drove several pioneering digitization initiatives that have transformed the business and enabled it to operate successfully throughout the pandemic and well beyond. AIA Sri Lanka has been recognized as a Best Workplace in Sri Lanka, presented by Great Place to Work® and was also recognized internationally in the Best Workplaces™️ in Asia as well as Best Workplace for Women and Millennials and was also recognized by FITIS (Federation of IT Industry SL) with Gold Award for Digital Excellence (’21). Gallup engagement scores are up for three consecutive years and AIA Sri Lanka has recorded its highest ever staff bonuses for two consecutive years.

Grow the company's premiums, market share and improve profitability. Responsible for brand & communication, product management, customer marketing, digital marketing, research and AIA Vitality. Led several transformation and business development initiatives for the organization. Revamped the entire product line up, enhancing the product propositions for retirement, health and life insurance whilst improving profitability significantly. Launched our first comprehensive health and life insurance product with market leading features and a strong distribution push including a high impact advertising campaign - adoption is at over 30% of sales, and growing. Establishing and driving a robust data driven approach to improving customer sales, customer retention and identifying profitable segments of the market to target. Driving AIA's brand promise of "healthier, longer, better lives" through our health and wellness platform and a series of strategic health related partnerships including telemedicine, virtual gyms, other integrations.

Led three key areas of responsibility – (1) Driving strategy and execution across the region for selling more insurance to our base of over ~30 mn existing customers ; (2) Develop and evolve the company’s Digital Marketing strategy and work with business units on excellence in implementation; (3) Lead a small team of data analysts to develop relevant models to support our efforts to cross sell, retain and acquire new customers. Worked closely with the marketing and distribution teams across AIA Group’s geography helping maximise the opportunity to cross sell additional protection and saving solutions to our ~30mn policyholders. Compared to 1H2012, Value of New Business (VoNB) from targeted customer marketing initiatives increased 3.3X and existing customers contributed to 28% of Group VoNB. Drove the Group’s early stage mobile, social and web strategy. Grew AIAs digital marketing footprint substantially - developed a unified online brand, a solid content strategy and a growing social media presence (FB, Linkedin) that delivered better customer engagement and commercial value across 10 countries. Worked with distribution channels to help solve their real and substantial challenges. Initiatives ranged from developing a fresh approach to agent recruitment, point of sales tools, dashboards to help drive channel productivity, developing analytics models to drive sales. Project Manager and business lead on the partnership with Discovery Group to roll out Vitality across Asia (ex China) and develop AIA’s initial thinking on integrating Vitality into our customer and distributor proposition across 3 markets.

Senior leadership role leading over 50 people and driving product management for variable and fixed deferred annuities, competitive intelligence and regulatory product filing. Managed the end-to-end product development lifecycle from idea to execution, maximizing sales of the annuity products profitably. Refreshed the product and fund line up to drive a stronger proposition and substantially improve profits for the product line. Designed and patented a new retirement income guarantee for variable annuities that significantly reduces the risk to NYL and offers customers a potentially higher, more tax efficient source of retirement income. At the time Income Plus was the first and only income guarantee offered by NYL on its variable products. Also launched the first market value adjusted fixed annuity at NYL to enhance the customer proposition and compete more effectively in the fixed annuity market.

Led the strategic initiative to develop new international markets for the introduction of innovative retirement products. Helped secure the first global partnership opportunity with a leading Australian bank to introduce Living Benefits on their retirement / pension products.Created a healthy pipeline of companies interested in partnering with Genworth International. Leveraged cross-functional and global teams to design and product and service propositions for implementation in Australia and Canada.

Strategic role to lead the development and growth of the Variable Annuity product line for Jackson. Created several products, guarantees (GMWBs, GMIB, GMAB) and solutions targeted at the retirement market. Product received recognition as #1 in product design by an industry research firm. New products, innovation and improved time to market, increased annual sales for Variable Annuities from ~$4.8 Bn in 2005 to ~$9.0 Bn in 2007. Established a strong foundation for Jackson's continued growth.

Key role to manage the implementation of product launches including streamlining, creating and managing cross-functional processes to ensure projects were implemented in a timely and efficient manner. Within 6 months, the role was expanded to manage Web, CRM, Sales reporting, Illustration and IT related projects and resources.

Led the marketing and product functions for one of the largest mutual funds in India responsible for all aspects of marketing. Was part of the start-up team to form the joint venture, define strategy and establish a strong foundation to ensure success. Assets under management increased from $40 Mn to $2 Bn over a 4-year period. Brand strategy resulted in Pru-ICICI as most preferred private sector mutual fund brand. Innovated new funds targeted at corporate treasuries and educational savings. Inspired by experience at Egg.com, conceptualized and managed the implementation of an internet based sales reporting solution. Launched the first set of e-commerce initiatives allowing customers to conduct transactions and view balances. Also established Indiainvest.com, the first mutual fund advisor / agent online community in 2000.

Egg.Com was a pioneer of internet banking and at the time an innovator in new products, customer experience. On assignment from Prudential Plc as Director to offer an on line pensions product and define a proposition and business case.

Strategic planning and business development. Worked with senior management to help identify joint venture partners in insurance and asset management. Developed strategy, business case and plans for the roll out of these companies once partners were selected.

Managed sales of computer equipment to large corporate accounts. Responsible for increasing repeat business and overseeing customer service.