IE magazine had a quick Q&A with Veer Ganesh, Senior Vice President, Global Business Transformation at global claims services firm McLarens;
You’ve just been promoted to Senior Vice President, Global Business Transformation. Could you talk us through your role at McLarens?
My remit is focused on McLarens’ global business transformation agenda. At its core, this means driving process improvement and embedding a strategy around automation, AI pilots, and shared-services delivery. Beyond that, I play a central role in enterprise-wide programmes that have a direct impact on our performance, including initiatives such as the transition from legacy systems to SAP, working-capital improvement, and standardisation across regions.
Equally important is translating strategy into measurable outcomes. That might mean reducing cycle times or improving quality. To do this effectively, my team works closely with Operations, Finance, and IT. And, of course, transformation is not only about technology, it’s also about people. A major part of my role is helping leaders and teams understand how change affects them and ensuring that change management remains central to everything we do.
Another exciting aspect of the role is connecting teams across regions. Often, the solutions to a challenge already exist somewhere in the organisation, and part of my job is to identify those best practices and scale them globally. That collaboration helps us avoid reinventing the wheel while creating consistency across markets.
You were also selected as part of McLarens’ inaugural Aspire programme. What did this entail?
ASPIRE is a 12-month programme designed to invest in McLarens’ high-potential colleagues. It was the first of its kind at the company, bringing together a global cohort of both client-facing and non-client-facing professionals.
The programme combines several elements: mentorship from a Global Management Team (GMT) member, one-to-one coaching from an executive coach with tailored development plans, group learning sessions, and a final presentation to the GMT. Personally, I found the mentorship especially valuable. Having a senior business leader as a sounding board for ideas and challenges provided insights that were both practical and strategic. Just as importantly, the programme gave me the chance to collaborate with peers from across the business, many of whom I wouldn’t ordinarily interact with, broadening my perspective and network.
What stood out was the cross-functional nature of the programme. In professional services, leadership development has often focused on client-facing roles. ASPIRE deliberately brought together both client-facing and non-client-facing colleagues, underlining that transformation depends on contributions from every part of the business.
How does your role fit within McLarens’ broader digital transformation strategy?
McLarens has been investing heavily in its digital transformation, including recent leadership hires and building new capabilities in data and analytics. My team is a central part of the execution engine for that strategy, collaborating closely with colleagues across the organisation.
We focus on redesigning processes, aligning them with modern platforms, automation and AI, and embedding these changes through a global operating model. A significant part of our work involves identifying “value pools”- areas where improvements in speed, transparency, or quality deliver tangible benefits for clients and colleagues.
So, our role is not only about implementing technology but also about creating transparency through data and using it to spark continuous improvement. And there is significant appetite across the industry for actionable data: internally, to improve operational efficiency and decision-making, and externally, from clients who want richer insights into their claims and risk exposures. Clients increasingly expect their partners not only to handle claims efficiently but also to generate insights from the underlying data. Whether it is spotting emerging risk patterns, benchmarking performance, or providing greater transparency, the demand for data-driven intelligence is only growing. For us, meeting that demand means harmonising systems, standardising data, and ensuring that insights are both reliable and easy to act upon.
As an organisation, we also view digital transformation as an enabler of talent development and succession planning. AI and automation free up capacity, allowing our people to focus on higher-value work and gain new skills. Importantly, it also opens new avenues for learning and development through AI-driven tools, supporting continuous upskilling and preparing our workforce to thrive in an evolving industry landscape.
What are the key challenges and opportunities for global organisations in the insurance and claims services sectors looking towards digital transformation?
The challenges are familiar across the industry: legacy systems, fragmented data, regulatory complexity, cyber risk, and a shortage of digital talent. In global claims services, in particular, it is common for firms to operate multiple systems inherited through acquisitions. That fragmentation makes it difficult to unify workflows or generate meaningful insights from data.
At the same time, these challenges create opportunities. Cloud platforms and ERP transformations can harmonise systems and data. Assisted AI is making progress in areas such as document intelligence, reducing time spent on repetitive tasks and allowing employees to focus on higher-value work. Straight-through processing has a role in standard cases, while analytics and data harmonisation open the door to more actionable insights for clients. These advances also mean providing for better outcomes, giving us deeper insight into data, and driving greater efficiency in the services we provide to clients.
All of this said, in our sector, the role of our people will remain the vital ingredient in the delivery of an effective claims services that ensures that end customers are dealt with empathetically and efficiently to not just meet but exceed ever growing service expectations. Technology is an enabler and will never replace human interface, especially in the technical claims arena.
The organisations that will succeed are those that approach digital transformation pragmatically: focusing on use cases that deliver measurable ROI, maintaining strong governance, and embedding human quality controls. Transformation is not a one-off project; it is about building scalable capabilities that keep delivering value over time.
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