Our people - Iliyana Mladenova

I started at MAXIS as Chief of Staff and Director of Transformation. The role was about understanding the business and how all the pieces fit together, which I found quite difficult without being able to meet people in person. I don’t think I realised quite how difficult it was until we opened our offices in May 2021, and I started seeing people face-to-face. I could suddenly do my job so much better. I learn the most from being around other people, and getting to know colleagues really made my journey, and my ability to add value, a lot better.

I would also say I joined MAXIS at a time when there was a lot of change going on. It was great to be involved in continuing MAXIS’ growth and watching the joint venture go from a start-up phase to operating as a more mature company, while also ensuring that we’re a sustainable business, well set up for the future. 

2. Your responsibilities have changed a little in that time – can you explain a bit more about your role now?

My role as Chief of Staff meant overseeing strategy and transformation and trying to have a holistic view of the company, and how we work with our members, clients and shareholders. 

In July my job changed slightly and I’m now the Chief Operating Officer, overseeing IT, Member Management and Change Management. These areas serve the whole company, taking all the business functions’ different priorities into consideration and marrying them together helping MAXIS to deliver for our clients. 

4. How can we improve as a network? What challenges do you think we face? 

Our main challenge as a network is providing data to clients and ensuring that it’s of a high quality. When we tackle this challenge alongside our members and ensure we have good data, it leads to better business for everyone involved.

Nowadays our clients are becoming more and more ambitious. We’re working with the largest global multinationals who move fast and want more from their EB network. We need to be on top of this and ensure we’re responding to their needs. This is both a challenge and an opportunity!  

I would also say that ever-changing regulations are a huge challenge within EB. If we look at the last two years, we’ve had to deal with a pandemic, BREXIT, and other global crises. The world moves fast, and we have to act quickly to keep up with changes and provide the best service to our clients.

5. What’s the biggest transformation opportunity for MAXIS and the network? 

Data. We are in the middle of one of our largest data transformation projects ever at MAXIS, which really looks at how we use and share data. This project will help us internally at MAXIS but will also aid the data journey for our members and improve the experience for clients. 

6. What are some of your career highlights so far? 

While I come from an actuarial and pricing background, it is probably the roles outside this specialism that have stood out for me. I once worked as a team manager in a health insurance customer services department, which is probably one of the most valuable experiences I’ve ever had. The role helped me really understand both what we were selling and the experience for our customers. 

I also worked as a third line underwriting risk manager in the P&C world. This role was all about the corporate governance of the company and managing risks. This experience has helped me ever since, especially with knowing that I prefer being closer to the business and customer.

Another highlight of my career was when I moved to the UAE as Head of the Middle East region. I was managing sales, underwriting, customer service and overseeing the whole journey for the customer. It was probably the steepest learning curve I’ve ever had but was great to experience a different culture.