How to Find and Connect with Top Executives in the Insurance Industry

Are you an insurance industry sales rep tasked with finding top executives to connect with? 

Does the phrase ‘looking for a needle in a haystack’ sometimes feel like it was coined just for you? 

We don’t blame you. The insurance industry in the US employed nearly 3 million people in 2023 – and somehow, you’re tasked with sifting through all these people to find the right top executives for your business to sell to. 

But – here’s a thought – what if you were really, really good at finding needles in haystacks? 

Spoiler alert: we’re going to show you how to take this thought out of your brain and put it into practice. This blog post will cover: 

• Understanding the Target Audience of Top Executives in the Insurance Industry
• The Old Way of Finding Insurance Industry Executives 
• Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to Identify Top Executives in Insurance: the Newer, Faster way
• How to Find the Email Addresses (and Phone Numbers) of Top Executives in the Insurance Industry

Once you’ve finished reading (so in about 5 minutes), you’re going to be a pro in identifying top insurance executives and finding their contact details. In fact, you’ll be so good at it that you’ll find yourself with a load of new free time – which you can spend learning about your ICP and building pitch-perfect outreach campaigns for them. 

Sound good? Get your magnifying glass out – let’s get started.

Understanding the Target Audience of Top Executives in the Insurance industry

Top executives in the insurance industry have to be extremely well-qualified. They often start off with a degree in business, finance, economics, or law, before getting industry-specific qualifications or advanced degrees. 

Once they’re educated up to their eyeballs, they tend to get extensive experience in insurance; maybe in a role like underwriting, claims, risk management, or operations, until they’re ready for a top-dog role. 

Let’s take a closer look at these roles: 

The Founder in the Insurance Industry

A founder is a person who actually takes a business idea and runs with it. They’re instrumental in getting the money, vision, and strategy together, and pulling together an initial team to drive the company forward.

To start a successful insurance business, they’ll need a deep understanding of the industry and a strong network of contacts.   

The Chief Executive Officer in the Insurance Industry

The Chief Executive Officer of an insurance business is responsible for making sure each department is running in a way that contributes to the overall strategic vision for the company. They’ll often also report to a board of directors – and, like the founder, have a strong background in the insurance industry. 

The Chief Financial Officer in the Insurance Industry

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) looks after all things finance (shocking, we know). An appropriate CFO for an insurance business will need deep expertise in the industry’s very specific financial and regulatory landscape and often has a CPA or equivalent certification. 

The Chief Underwriting Officer in the Insurance Industry

The Chief Underwriting Officer (CUO) is responsible for, you guessed it, underwriting. Responsibilities involve assessing risk, determining pricing, and making sure that the department’s activities are profitable and in line with regulations. Years of experience in risk assessment, pricing strategies, and regulatory compliance are all necessary here. 

The Chief Risk Officer in the Insurance Industry

The Chief Risk Officer (CRO – not to be confused with a Chief Revenue Officer) is responsible for the business’s risk management framework. Risks could mean financial risks, operational risks, or compliance risks that come with running an insurance business. They’ll have extensive experience in risk management within insurance, and often be qualified with an FRM or PRM certification. 

The VP Claims in the Insurance Industry

The VP role often reports to the C-level executives in a business. VPs usually take a more operational as opposed to strategic focus. As a VP of Claims, an individual is responsible for making sure claims are processed properly – and minimizing the risk of losses or fraud. These individuals often come from a claims background and will have to deeply understand insurance, claims processes, and the legal aspects of claims handling.

At this level, top executives in the insurance industry will have to demonstrate: 

Decision-making authority: leaders will need to be confident in making highly complex, high-stakes decisions that could inform the entire direction of the company. 

Risk management focus: risk management is one of the most important things leaders of an insurance company have to execute well – otherwise, they risk the business becoming non-compliant and unprofitable. 

Strategic vision: the insurance industry is centuries old, but it’s changing and developing rapidly. For a business to thrive, its leaders have to adapt to these changes and make sure that it stays competitive. 

How Can I Decide Which Top Executives to Target in the Insurance Industry? 

Back to our needle-in-a-haystack dilemma. You now know about the different roles in the insurance industry you could target, but how do you decide which ones to actually go after? 

There’s no magic formula for this (which means that you’re not going to be reaching out to the same people as everyone else in the industry – phew!). What you want to do is reach out to the people who most closely fit your ICP. In other words: who’s actually going to be using, and benefitting from, your product? Who’s going to get excited about all the things it can do and the numbers it can drive? 

Your historical data is another useful place to look here. How many people do you usually have to speak to at a business to get one sale over the line – and who were these people? Reach out to similar profiles, and you’ll be on the money. 

Once you’ve got this nailed down, your next step is to start building a relationship with them: understanding who they are, where they are, and what they need from a product like yours. Only then can you start delivering value and presenting yourself as the perfect person to buy from. 

The Old Way of Finding Insurance Industry Executives 

Does this sound familiar? You find out about a company that seems pretty closely matched to your ICP, so you head to their website looking for people to contact. Either there’s no ‘about us’ or ‘contact us’ page at all – or if there is one, there’s precisely 0 contact data on it. Great. 

Or maybe you don’t even know the names of the companies you should be reaching out to, so you resort to googling ‘top insurance companies’. Names like Nationwide and Famers pop up – and you’re not sure how much you fancy your chances of getting hold of the top executives there. Even if your outreach templates are really, really good. 

Long story short, methods like the above are time-consuming, tedious, and unreliable. Next! 

Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to Identify Top Executives in Insurance

Here’s where the fun starts. You can think of LinkedIn Sales Navigator as the modern-day magnifying glass built just for salespeople who need to do a large amount of prospecting in their roles. 

(Yes, it comes with a monthly or annual subscription cost – but it’s an investment that’s going to pay for itself). 

First things first, you want to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s advanced filtering capabilities to filter out all the insurance executives you don’t want to speak to. Start by setting the industry filter to Insurance (no surprises there) and the target positions you’ve scoped out using the methods we just talked about. 

If there’s any extra information to hand about your ICP – and really, there should be – then apply this to your filtering too. Think geography, company size, headcount, revenue…you get the picture. 

If your ICP varies a bit (by role, for example), then you can categorize these different profiles into groups using LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s lead lists feature. These are pretty useful to have to hand, as they’ll allow for a deeper understanding of your different buyer profiles later down the line. 

Tips for insurance industry sales reps using LinkedIn Sales Navigator 

Those needles starting to look a bit bigger now? There’s even more you can do to help yourself out: 

Use recommended lead lists: we LOVE this feature. LinkedIn takes a close look at your past activity and then builds you a brand-new list full of new people to contact – no filtering needed on your behalf. 

Boolean search: use operators like AND, NOT, and OR to build a list that more accurately reflects your ICP. 

Saved searches: if you make a search that really hits the nail on the head, save it to come back to at a later date, or make small changes to once you’ve done your initial outreach. 

Things feeling a little easier? Good – but we’re not done yet. You’ve found your top executives in the insurance industry. Now it’s time to connect with them.

How to Find the Email Addresses (and Phone Numbers) of Top Executives in the Insurance Industry

Got an image of you becoming best friends (well, the professional version) with everyone on your new list of leads? 

Keep that image in mind – you’re almost there. To start making those first steps towards friendship, you need to get hold of their contact details. Here are 3 ways to do it using Surfe (we’re not biased, promise!). 

Using a LinkedIn profile

Want to find the contact details for a single person? Surfe can help with that. First of all, you’ll want to download the Surfe Chrome extension, and then visit their LinkedIn profile. You should see a little button inviting you to ‘Add to CRM’ – hit it, and then Surfe will pull up the right email address and phone number, and send it all to your CRM thanks to the LinkedIn CRM integration. 

If you’re wondering what wizardry this is, we can explain. Surfe uses waterfall enrichment technology – which basically means it cycles through several of our favorite databases until it finds contact details that seem accurate. It only aggregates data from the very best contact databases (like Apollo, RocketReach, Dropcontact, Hunter, and People Data Labs) and then runs email addresses through ZeroBounce to make sure they’re accurate.   

Using LinkedIn Sales Navigator lists

But what if you’ve just used LinkedIn Sales Navigator to build a big lead list like we asked you to? Don’t worry – you’re not going to have to sift through each and every person’s LinkedIn profile. Surfe can find the right contact details directly from LinkedIn Sales Navigator: just select the contacts you want to enrich and click ‘Export to CRM’. Every selected person, along with their email address and phone number, will be sent right through to your CRM. Thanks, waterfall enrichment technology 🤝

Using the Surfe App 

Last but not least, a solution for everyone who’s not on LinkedIn- or has a CSV list of contacts that aren’t attached to a LinkedIn profile or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Head to the Surfe app and upload your list of top executives in the insurance industry (btw, this list can be hundreds or even thousands of people long – the sky’s the limit). Surfe will automatically enrich the list, presenting you with email addresses and phone numbers at a 93% find rate. Job done, and more time for you to work on becoming best friends with your prospects.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

Those needles in haystacks are feeling pretty findable, right? Use a combination of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Surfe, and your ICP, and you’ll be generating lists of top executives in the insurance industry to connect with as long as your arm. 

Just make sure the rest of your team can keep up, ok?

FAQs About Finding and Connecting with Top Executives in the Healthcare Industry

Who Are the Key Persons in the Insurance Industry? 

Key roles in the insurance industry include the Founder, CEO, CFO, CRO, CUO, and VP Claims. People in these roles often have an extensive academic and professional background in the world of insurance, usually specializing in one area like risk, underwriting, or claims. 

How to Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator for the Insurance Industry?

The best way to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator if you want to find top executives in the insurance industry is to use its powerful filtering. Start by selecting the right industry (insurance) and the level of seniority you want to contact. From there, use the filters to build a list that matches your ICP in terms of geography, company size, headcount, revenue, and so on. From there, you can save your list or use the recommend lists feature to find even more people to reach out to.  

How to Find Email Addresses of Top Executives in the Insurance Industry?

You can use one tool to find email addresses of top executives in the insurance industry, in and outside of LinkedIn. Surfe uses waterfall enrichment technology to find the contact details for an individual LinkedIn profile, a LinkedIn Sales Navigator list, or a CSV file uploaded to the Surfe app. The best part? It does it in seconds, and automatically sends all the contact data over to your CRM, too.