This is the story of how one person was given opportunities to grow and become a key developer of Areegator, Ngern Tid Lor’s online insurance sales platform. This platform not only provides retail insurance brokers an opportunity to earn more income, but also helps people more easily access insurance coverage that is most suitable for their needs.
The journey of opportunity for Mr. Charnrit Sookplang, SVP - Insurance Broker Analysis and Strategy, Ngern Tid Lor Public Company Limited, and a co-planner and developer of the Areegator platform, began when Charnrit decided to join CFG Services Co., Ltd. as a management trainee. At that time, the company was still a small company operating a title loan business within the AIG group before being rebranded and growing into Ngern Tid Lor Public Company Limited in the present.
Charnrit’s 13 years of growing together with Ngern Tid Lor were full of stories about learning from the organization that a culture of creating opportunities enables people in the organization to unlock their full potential and develop without limitation.
Executive meeting room: a classroom for striving staff
The Subprime Crisis in Europe and America, which forced the AIG Group to sell some of its assets, including CFG, to Bank of Ayudhya, prompted Charnrit, who graduated with a master’s degree in finance from the U.S. and worked with CFG for only a year, to ask himself whether he should stay to work at the shophouse office in Pathum Thani or find a new job with a brighter future.
But due to this organizational change, Charnrit had an opportunity to join the FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis) Team to do what he loved and participate in several financial presentations in the executive and boardroom. As a result, he decided to stay with Ngern Tid Lor. He told us that:
“Sitting and listening in the meeting room, I believed that even though Ngern Tid Lor’s management team at the time was a small team, it was made up of highly talented and capable people. Every meeting attendance was a valuable experience because it allowed me to see things from different perspectives, whether it is from risks, finance, or business. It was like compiling a ‘decision-making guide’ that helped me find the right actions or make decisions when faced with a particular situation.”
Learning outside the comfort zone
After Ngern Tid Lor moved its head office to the Juthamard Building, Charnrit and his colleagues at the supervisory level were encouraged to challenge themselves out of their comfort zone and familiar work environment to work together in the War Room to plan a three-year business strategy.
“We learned how to analyze business problems and think critically when asked, ‘So what?’ by Mr. Piyasak Ukritnukun, Ngern Tid Lor’s Managing Director, so that we could sharpen our skills to find out what we wanted to do or what we really wanted to achieve with the things that we came up with. It was quite difficult at first, but after done many times, we learned to answer the question ‘so what’ faster, clearer, and smarter.”
Moreover, the opportunity to work closely together helped build friendship and a better understanding of how other departments has worked, which in turn resulted in faster and more efficient coordination between departments.
Broadening learning horizons through a global classroom
The opportunity to attend training sessions, seminars, or studies of successful cases in different countries provides new perspectives, allowing us to reflect on ourselves and better find what we are missing in our own business. This opportunity is something Charnrit believes could help bring out people’s potential.
“I was one of NTLers who has been given the opportunity to learn about microfinance in various countries such as Italy, Indonesia, and Cambodia, and about technologies of FinTech and InsurTech companies in Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as the U.S. and U.K., which are home to global FinTech companies. I also had a chance to learn about Alibaba’s business at its headquarters in China.
I also got an opportunity to learn new business models in Australia and that is the thing that inspired me to develop Areegator, Ngern Tid Lor’s online insurance sales platform.”
The real world – an opportunity to learn to push the limits
No matter what we have learned from the opportunities given to us, the biggest challenge is to put it into practice in the real world, in a larger mission with a larger team to manage and make decisions that have to be made more carefully.
In 2016, Charnrit was assigned to work as a Deputy CFO at Hattha Kaksekar Limited or HKL (a microfinance subsidiary of the Bank of Ayudhya in Cambodia). It was another big test that he had to overcome.
“One challenging difference was that when I was at Ngern Tid Lor, if I wanted money to increase the money amount for lending, I could just get the executive to sign a proposal off and then withdraw the money from Bank of Ayudhya to proceed. In Cambodia, to get the fund of 100 million baht for a loan, we had to deal with 15-20 financial institutions, and each contract would take about three months to complete for the institution to approve the fund.
The post-it on which I wrote ‘Keep Learning’ that I put on my desk from the first day of work kept reminding me not to give up. No matter how big or small the issue, I had to keep learning in order to achieve the mission.
I truly gained more experience from everything I’ve done. In addition to getting to know more financial institutions from Europe and Asia, I learned how to read a thick loan agreement quickly and understood that changes and self-challenges are what keep us going forward.”
Thirst for wisdom giving rise to the opportunity to take part in new business development for the organization
Being given the opportunity to continue to learn and develop is one of the keys that made Charnrit clearly understand the Why in Ngern Tid Lor’s insurance business, which led to the development of Areegator. The platform was aimed to deliver opportunities to small insurance brokers to help them grow their business and customer base with more insurance products for customers to choose from, while giving people the opportunity to access insurance products more easily.
At the same time, the Areegator platform also gave Charnrit the opportunity to grow and learn while managing and developing a business in a larger scope.
“Areegator allows me to learn and gain more experience from product testing to collect data for further development and to share product development ideas at the RISE Tech Conference in Hong Kong to obtain comments from financial and insurance experts about the direction of this platform.
I also have to manage a larger team because Areegator is like a new business unit, consisting of sales departments, marketing departments, and operations departments working and learning together to solve problems and improve products that better meet user needs, while finding ways to help our team work more efficiently.”
One of the conclusions that Charnrit has reached during his learning journey at Ngern Tid Lor is that when you are given the opportunity, do not forget to pass on the opportunity to others as well.
“This is the story that attests to the importance of building people to build an organization.”
Tips : 5 things you should do on your learning journey
- Focus on goals and keep learning.
- Embrace changes to improve.
- Positive thinking to move forward.
- Surround yourself with great people.
- Give and take opportunities.