MetLife makes two senior hires

In a statement, the life insurer said Brenton Charnley has been appointed to senior manager of innovation. He will be responsible for embedding the innovation process within the organisation and driving improvement of the customer experience.

Mr Charnley was previously a consultant with KPMG Australia and was the global program manager for elevate61, KPMG's entrepreneur program for tech start-ups.
Meanwhile, Alex Kleiman was named head of B2B sales and head of Melbourne office. He will lead MetLife’s new business sales and acquisition efforts in group and direct divisions.

Mr Kleiman joins from Mercer, where he was previously partner and sales leader and responsible for driving the growth of Mercer’s financial services business.

MetLife chief executive Deanne Stewart said: "Given our business vision and commitment to innovation, we’re excited to welcome Brenton to help further ingrain a culture of innovation in MetLife’s DNA and cut through complexity, drawing on his experience with start-ups and entrepreneurs."

She added: "Alex has exceptional skills developing partnerships and will continue to evolve our sales strategies. Alex will also lead our Melbourne office where, over the past two years, we've continued to expand our talent pool of senior executives to support a growing number of key clients and prospects."

Ms Stewart added that the growing MetLife team was working on challenging the industry to offer better solutions and improved customer experiences.

"Customers are quite rightly demanding more from the industry and it’s crucial we devote time and resources to better understand their needs," she said.

"We’re focused on delivering solutions that really make a difference and ensuring every step of the process is handled with the utmost care and compassion."