2023 Women to Watch Awards Americas EMEA
Gabrielle Durisch Global head of sustainability solutions
Allianz Commercial, a unit of Allianz SE
Zurich
Gabrielle Durisch loved math growing up and always wanted to go into finance, but chose to study geology at the University of Edinburgh because earth science really interested her.
“My brothers still tease me because if you want to see a rock better you can lick it and it makes it shiny and you can then see a little bit more differentiation. I used to do this on field trips a long time ago,” Ms. Durisch said.
After starting her finance career at Deloitte in London in 2001, she qualified as an accountant and later joined the finance team at Vauxhall Motors. In 2006, she took the opportunity to move to the company’s operations in Zurich on secondment.
The move to Switzerland ultimately led her out of finance and into the insurance sector. In 2011, she joined Zurich Insurance Group, first working in the general insurance expense office before moving into claims and underwriting roles.
Ms. Durisch worked with the risk engineering team to develop climate change resilience coverages and services. “I realized that we needed somebody who would represent the business when you’re talking about sustainability,” she said.
In 2020, Ms. Durisch pivoted to a newly created role as head of sustainability for commercial insurance. In April of this year, she joined Allianz Commercial where she heads up a center of expertise for environmental, social and governance activities and sustainability.
Ms. Durisch says it was seeing Sierra Signorelli, CEO of commercial insurance at Zurich, receive a Women to Watch award in 2019 that made her realize the importance of having strong female role models.
“Women need more support, especially the ones just coming into the industry. It’s quite a daunting industry, especially if you’re in a market-facing, or claims or customer-facing part of the business. It’s still pretty old-fashioned,” she said.
Ms. Durisch is “an exceptional leader, who nurtures everyone’s talent,” said Abigail Gilfillan, London-based management consultant in insurance at Accenture, who worked with her at Zurich. “For someone who was quite new and young in the business,” she was a role model, Ms. Gilfillan said.
Claire Wilkinson
