What you need to know:

• IAG making major reorganisation, aligning customer and marketing.
• Resource from across the business to be combined under new set-up, helmed by ex-Meta and former Diageo exec Michelle Klein as IAG's just appointed Chief Customer & Marketing Officer.
• Group Executive Julie Batch, the insurer’s former customer chief and one-time lead at IAG’s Customer Labs, is driving the change.
• Phase one sees marketing-customer headcount triple to circa 200 staff. Phase two will go deeper as IAG plans end-to-end capability across marketing, customer experience, relations and comms, and transformation.

IAG’s appointment of ex-Meta exec Michelle Klein signals a major overhaul as Group Executive Julie Batch seeks to consolidate marketing and customer experience across the business.

Klein has both functions under her remit as Batch, who spent four years until 2020 as chief customer officer before taking the lead on strategy and innovation ahead of rising to the top job within IAG’s Direct Insurance division, re-engineers Australia’s biggest insurer.

The aim is to regain customer experience and digital transformation and align it with marketing. IAG has excelled in brand-driven marketing, taking Australia’s top gong for advertising effectiveness 18 months ago, but marketing’s remit was arguably limited to ad-driven campaigns and brand platforms.

Batch, who also ran IAG’s Customer Labs unit, is now planning to pool resource from across the business – including teams that do not currently report into her division, such as tech and operations – to vastly expand that remit.

It is understood phase one of the transition will see marketing-customer headcount triple from circa 60 marketers to around 200, with around 65 customer relations staff being wrapped into the new set-up, followed by comms across multiple business units, customer experience, content, behavioural science, customer inclusion and governance resource as IAG builds an end-to-end unit.

Meta to Metamorphosis

Klein joins from Meta, where she rose to the top global business marketing gig after a decade with the firm, following global lead marketing roles with Diageo.

The appointment concludes an extensive international search ahead of IAG’s customer-marketing reorganisation. With a massive remit, Klein, a triple Effie winner, is now tasked with delivering Batch’s vision.

The former Fairfax journalist, and a fan of author Franz Kafka, is up for the challenge – and plans to leverage Big Tech learning honed in Menlo Park to unlock growth.

“As a marketer who cares about putting customers at the centre of the brand experience, the most compelling aspect of insurance is that it could be considered one of the most emotionally-driven purchase decisions a person makes,” wrote Klein of her appointment.

“Franz Kafka started his career in insurance and talked about the effect of insurance on psychology. While protecting yourself with insurance doesn’t ward off the risks we face in our daily lives, it provides invaluable safety and peace of mind. This demonstrates the importance the industry has to enable people to survive and thrive. I want to help shape not only the next chapter of IAG, but bring everything I’ve learned from Silicon Valley to drive transformation through innovation and technology.”

Klein is set to take the helm in late May.